Amyl nitrite is a chemical compound with the formula C5H11ONO.
Amyl nitrite is bioactive, being a vasodilator, which is the basis of its use as a prescription medicine.
As an inhalant, it also has a psychoactive effect, which has led to its recreational use.
Amyl nitrite was historically employed medically to treat heart diseases as well as angina, and sometimes used as an antidote for cyanide poisoning.
It was thought to act as an oxidant, to induce the formation of methemoglobin.
Trace amounts are added to some perfumes.
It is also used recreationally as an inhalant drug that induces a brief euphoric state, and when combined with other intoxicant stimulant drugs such as cocaine or MDMA, the euphoric state intensifies and is prolonged.
When some stimulative drugs wear off, a common side effect is a period of depression or anxiety (come down), amyl nitrite is sometimes used to combat these negative after-effects, which has led to its use as a recreational drug
Amyl nitrite, in common with other alkyl nitrites, is a potent vasodilator; it expands blood vessels, resulting in lowering of the blood pressure.
Amyl nitrite may be used during cardiovascular stress testing in patients with suspected hypertrophic cardiomyopathy to cause vasodilation and thereby reduce afterload and provoke obstruction of blood flow towards the aorta from the ventricle by increasing the pressure gradient, thereby causing left ventricular outflow obstruction.
Alkyl nitrites are a source of nitric oxide, which signals for relaxation of the involuntary muscles.
Physical effects of alkyl nitrites include decrease in blood pressure, headache, flushing of the face, increased heart rate, dizziness, and relaxation of involuntary muscles, especially the blood vessel walls and the internal and external anal sphincter.
Overdose symptoms include nausea, vomiting, hypotension, hypoventilation, shortness of breath, and fainting.
Amyl nitrite may also intensify the experience of synesthesia.
Amyl nitrite, for patients with angina, can be inhaled by the patient during an angina attack and repeated every fifteen minutes.
Amyl nitrite has been widely replaced by nitroglycerin for the treatment of acute angina.
Liquid amyl nitrite is highly toxic when ingested because of the unsafely high concentration it causes in blood.
Acute toxicity principally results when the nitrite oxidizes a significant proportion of hemoglobin in the blood without oxygen, forming methemoglobin, which cannot carry oxygen.
Severe poisoning cases will progress to methemoglobinemia, characterized by a blue-brown discoloration under the skin which could be mistaken for cyanosis.
Treatment with oxygen and intravenous methylene blue it is an effective antidote by way of catalyzing the production of the enzyme responsible for reducing the methemoglobin in the blood back to hemoglobin.
The use of regular near-infrared–based pulse oximetry becomes useless with this discolorization.
Blood gas analysis on the whole has limited effectiveness, as the increased methemoglobin level increases the oxygen binding affinity of regular hemoglobin, and the measurement of actual ratios and levels of methemoglobin and hemoglobin must accompany any blood gas partial pressure sample in these cases. Place on site