Asthma, Not Ephedra, Caused Football Player's Death

CHICAGO--Chronic asthma, and not ephedra abuse, was determined to be the cause of the Aug. 3 death of a Northwestern football player. Cook County Medical Examiner Edmund Donoghue released the autopsy report Monday, which stated that even though Rashidi Wheeler had banned stimulants in his system, it was Wheeler's bronchial asthma that caused his death.

The coroner turned up both ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in Wheeler's system, although Donoghue told the Associated Press (AP) that the stimulants were "well below toxic or lethal levels." The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) put ephedra on its list of banned substances in 1997.

According to the AP, Wheeler's family has asked Rev. Jesse Jackson and attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. to look into the school's role in his death, since it allegedly took paramedics 40 minutes to reach Wheeler.

In related news, a new study in the Aug. 22/29 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) (286:930-5, 2001) (http://jama.ama-assn.org) reported that in a population-based sample of 16,679 adults, 1 percent (or 167 respondents) reported using ephedra for weight loss reasons. The study's authors, led by Heidi Michels Blanck, Ph.D., from the Atlanta National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, concluded that with the rising rates of obesity, nonprescription product use is likely to increase accordingly.