MAPS: Ecstasy link to long-term brain damage

[Peter Webster <vignes@xxxxxxxxx>]

From: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mailing-List: list psychiatry-research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; contact
psychiatry-research-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 08:54:31 -0000
Subject: [psychiatry-research] Ecstasy link to long-term brain damage
Reply-To: "Ian Pitchford" <ian.pitchford@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ecstasy link to long-term brain damage
Monday, March 4 2002

DISTURBING evidence is emerging that the increasingly popular drug ecstasy can
be linked to users suffering long-term brain damage.

University of Adelaide researchers have found that ecstasy taken on a few
occasions could cause severe damage to brain cells, with the potential to cause
future memory loss or psychological problems.

Dr Rod Irvine, an internationally regarded ecstasy expert from the University's
Department of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology, says with 7% of
17-year-olds reporting use of ecstasy, major health problems could be expected
in the future.

"For many years it has been known from animal experiments that small doses of
ecstasy-even if only taken on only a few occasions-can cause severe damage to
certain brain cells," he says. "More recently, evidence has started to
accumulate suggesting that this damage may also occur in humans. Brain scans
and psychological assessment of ecstasy users has been used to obtain this
information.

"If our suspicions are proved correct, it will mean many of our young people
will have memory loss or psychological problems in the future."

Dr Irvine's research on brain damage caused by ecstasy shows that the drug
seems to work mainly through its effects on one type of brain cell, and even
through one molecule in those cells. It also seems likely that the way the body
reacts chemically to ecstasy is important in producing adverse effects, as is
the surrounding temperature, which can lead to users overheating.

Adelaide's reputation as having the highest per capita death rate from ecstasy
in Australia-and perhaps even the world-forms another component of Dr Irvine's
research.

Dr Irvine is looking at the shorter-term consequences of ecstasy "overdoses",
and has established that the high rate of death is due to a different strain of
ecstasy appearing on the Adelaide market in the mid1990s.

"Normal" ecstasy contains the pharmacological ingredient known as MDMA as its
main ingredient, but the Adelaide strain often contained no MDMA but rather a
more potent chemical known as PMA.

"PMA hasn't been around since the early 1970s when it was responsible for the
deaths of several people in Ontario, Canada, and now it's reappeared here in
Adelaide," Dr Irvine says. "We don't know where the PMA came from, but we do
know that it has been prevalent in Adelaide since the mid 1990s."


Media Contacts
Dr Rod Irvine
Telephone: +61 8 8303 5976 (work)
Ben Osborne, Media Office
Telephone: +61 8 8303 5414 (work)

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/pr/media/releases/2002/ecstasy.html


-----------------
MAPS-Forum@xxxxxxxx, a member service of the Multidisciplinary Association
for Psychedelic Studies (see www.maps.org/memsub.html).
To [un]subscribe, email the message text,
[un]subscribe maps-forum youraddress to majordomo@xxxxxxxx
List archives: www.cerebral.org/Maps
Guidelines for authors: www.maps.org/guidelines.txt
MAPS Forum is supported by a generous grant from the Promind Foundation.