re: 'This is what one tiny pill can do to you'

Malignant hyperthermia is a pharmacogenic disease and is manifest by a hypermetabolic crisis with tachycardia, ventricular ectopy, metabolic acidosis, and a rapid rise in body temperature. 'Ecstasy', 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), is a semisynthetic amphetamine, the recreational use of which has increased in recent years. Severe reactions to MDMA have been noted in the past, including hyperthermia, rhabdomyolysis and disseminated intravascular coagulation. Reports of overdose with MDMA are rare, but hyperthermia and rhabdomyolysis have been reported in association. Compounds such as MDMA are thought to cause hyperthermia by a central action at 5HT 2 receptors. However dantrolene, a muscle relaxant acting peripherally, has been used apparently successfully in the treatment of MDMA overdose. We report a case of acute perioperative increase in temperature, initially diagnosed and treated as malignant hyperpyrexia, in a patient who later emerged to be an 'ecstasy' abuser.


If an MH reaction is treated early in the process, complete recovery can be expected. Multiple organ failure and death can occur, however, and 1 or 2 deaths are reported to the MH hotline each year. Before the approval of dantrolene by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the late 1970s for use in the treatment of MH, the mortality of an acute MH reaction was greater than 70%. Currently, the mortality of acute MH is less than 5%.


She appears to be in a wheelchair in the after pic likely related to a stroke presumably caused by the pathology of MH.

So yes, a rare case of MH caused by her first use of MDMA could have precipitated her condition.