In the past, KS had almost affected elderly men and was benign. The new version was potentially fatal. From their first field interviews, the KSOI members suspected that nitrites were involved in this strange new syndrome, since many of the men in the initial cases had frequently used poppers. In 1867, amyl nitrite was first used to relieve angina pains in heart patients. When the fumes were inhaled, the pain subsided.
Nitrates expand arteries by permitting muscles to relax.
No reports of KS or immune problems surfaced in those heart patients, but the inhalant was used only rarely and during the patients' later years. Even so, there were early warning signs about the recreational use of nitrites in the medical literature beginning in the 1970s. This last point was underscored when, on the eve of the AIDS epidemic, a researcher at the Food and Drug Administration warned that if a certain metabolization occurred, nitrites would produce potent carcinogens. Hank Wilson, a gay activist in San Francisco who founded the Committee to Monitor Poppers in 1981, is candid about why poppers are so prevalent. If you're having casual sex, in a park or bathroom, wherever, you don't have as much foreplay, you're more orgasmic-orientated.