Cotton Fever

Cotton fever is a syndrome that is often associated with intravenous drug use, specifically the use of cotton to filter drugs like heroin. The cause of the condition has been established to be the endotoxin shed by the bacteria Enterobacter agglomerans which colonizes cotton plants. A condition very similar to cotton fever was described in the early 1940s among cotton-farm workers. The term cotton fever was coined in 1975 after the syndrome was recognized in intravenous drug users. However, some sources have attributed the symptoms of cotton fever with simple sepsis occasioned by unsafe and unsanitary drug injection practices. This is borne out by the fact cotton fever occurs in equal spread with all injectable drug users, with various filter materials utilized.

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Famous quotes containing the word cotton:

    We are constituted a good deal like chickens, which, taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the chimney-corner, will often peep till they die, nevertheless; but if you put in a book, or anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)