Arrests in drug deaths inquiry

Links between drugs deaths being investigated

Police have arrested three men in connection with the death of a man suspected of dying from a mystery drug illness which has claimed dozens of lives.

West Midlands Police said two men were arrested on suspicion of murder and one on suspicion of supplying heroin after a man was found dead on Saturday in Wolverhampton.

Health officials have been investigating a possible link between the deaths of the man and two other people in the Midlands and the deaths of intravenous heroin users in Scotland, England and the Republic of Ireland.

Cause of illness still unknown

Police said toxicologists had not established the cause of death, but warned that "adulterated heroin" appeared to be in circulation in the Midlands.

Two heroin users in Liverpool and three from Manchester have died over the last month from an unidentified illness.

The number of deaths linked to the illness stands at 36, including 16 cases in Glasgow, two in Aberdeen and eight in Dublin.

A spokesman for Greater Glasgow Health Board, which has been coordinating investigations into the mystery illness, said it had been made aware of the arrests.

He said there had been three deaths in Wolverhampton which the local health authority suspected were caused by the mystery illness.

"Those deaths are still being investigated to establish if they are linked to the Glasgow and Dublin outbreaks," he said.

"As yet that investigation is incomplete."

Specialist laboratories

On Friday, the NHS Executive North-West said it had identified nine cases in Liverpool and Manchester over the past month, of which five had died.

It confirmed the cases were being linked to the fatalities in Scotland and Dublin.

Specimens from the most recent Glasgow cases are being tested at specialist laboratories in the UK and at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

It is suspected the mystery illness is caused by anaerobic bacteria which live in the absence of oxygen and the specimens are being tested for this.

The illness is linked to heroin that is injected into muscle or other tissue, rather than into a vein.

Early symptoms are swelling or inflammation around the site of the injection, followed by abscesses that worsen over several days.

The patient then usually suffers toxic shock and is taken into intensive care.

Greater Glasgow Health Board advised addicts to smoke the drug rather than inject it.