Figure 2A, B: peripheral blood smear with basophilic stippling of red blood cells(arrows)
The patient stopped drinking alcohol and marijuana abuse. Chelating therapy with Succimer was initiated, with a dose of 500 mg (5 capsules) daily and now after 4 weeks the blood lead level has declined to 25 µg/dl and there is 6 kg weight gain. All signs and symptoms were removed and all laboratory findings changed to normal condition. Although there are some documented researches supporting the correlation between hypertension and lead poisoning, in our case, marijuana withdrawal could also be the cause of sympathetic overactivity(3). Table 1 shows the transition of laboratory data from the first presentation to recovery time.
Table 1: The initial and final (post-treatment) results of the laboratory tests