Evaluation the level of Serum Liver enzymes in Crystal Addicts

Evaluation of Liver Enzymes’ Level in Blood Serum of Crystal Addicts

Crystal or dimetamphetamine is one of the harmful substances which are imported to Iran in the last few years. Crystal is made of pure heroin. Its harmful effects are more than heroin. Addiction to crystal can produce psychological and organ damage. In order to find out which part of body could be affected, examination of enzymes is useful. Liver is one of the organs which can be infected by drug abuse. Liver function test can be used to show these harmful effects. The aim of the present study is to exanimate of the effects of crystal abuse on liver enzymes such as Aspartat transaminase, Alanine transaminase and Alkaline phosphatase in crystal abusers.

The current study is a case-control and cross-sectional study on 105 crystal addicted as case group who had referred to addiction treatment center for the first time and 100 healthy people as control group. The activity of enzymes was measured by callorimetery-spectrophotometry method. Results were analyzed by T-test exam and SPSS-16 software.

results show that using crystal increases the level of AST, ALT and ALP and there is a significant relationship between crystal abuse and the level of ALP (p=0.027). In addition, there is a significant relationship between duration of crystal use and the level of ALP (p<0.05).

comparing with AST and ALT levels, ALP level is more affected by crystal abuse.