Effect of Ethanol on Drug Levels in Blood in Fatal Cases

Abstract

The cumulative frequency distributions of postmortem blood levels of four centrally-acting drugs (pentobarbitone, amitriptyline, chlormethiazole and dextropropoxyphene) have been derived from fatalities involving either the named drug only or the drug in association with ethanol only. For each drug, the presence of ethanol markedly reduced the concentration at which a given proportion of fatalities occurred.