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Ecstasy today, Parkinson's tomorrow?
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| LiquidX |
I found this article through cnn.com and also heard it on the news today afternoon ....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Partying with Ecstasy several times a night, a common practice among users of the illegal drug, may damage key neurons in the brain and perhaps hasten the onset of Parkinson's disease, according to a study in monkeys.
But some researchers were skeptical that the results from the animal studies translate to humans and said such studies discourage research that might lead to medical uses for Ecstasy.
A Johns Hopkins University researcher injected squirrel monkeys and baboons with three shots of Ecstasy, also known as MDMA, three hours apart, mimicking dosages "often used by MDMA users at all-night dance parties." He said the drug caused enduring damage to dopamine-producing neurons in the brains of the animals.
The damage was still evident two weeks to six weeks later, said Dr. George A. Recaurte, the lead author the study appearing this week in the journal Science. But he said it is not clear if the damaged neurons will repair themselves, a key factor in whether Ecstasy could cause Parkinson's disease.
Parkinson's disease is a brain disorder triggered by the permanent loss of dopamine-producing nerve cells.
"We already know from the literature that brain dopamine declines with age," he said. "A young individual who sustains injury to these dopamine cells and depletes their reserve may be at greater risk of Parkinsonism."
But Julie A. Holland, a psychiatrist on the faculty of the New York University School of Medicine, said earlier studies on humans have failed to show that Ecstasy causes permanent damage to dopamine neurons.
"It is a big leap to extrapolate what he is seeing in these primates and what you expect to see in Parkinson's syndrome," Holland, the author of a book on the risk and recreational use of Ecstasy.
She said Ricaurte's research has helped "demonize" Ecstasy and prevented studies to determine if the drug could be used to treat post traumatic syndrome.
Dr. Alan I. Leshner, former head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, however, said the Ricaurte study shows "that even an occasional use of Ecstasy can lead to significant damage to brain systems."
Stephen Kish, a University of Toronto researcher studying Parkinson's disease and Ecstasy, said he analyzed the brain of a deceased habitual Ecstasy user two years ago and found no evidence of dopamine neuron damage.
"Ricaurte's findings do raise a concern that Ecstasy may damage the dopamine neurons and potentially cause Parkinson's," said Kish. But he said the current study "might not translate to humans" and has not proven a clear connection between the drug and the brain disease.
In the study, the animals were given six milligrams for every 2.2 pounds of their weight. One of five monkeys and one of five baboons used in the study died shortly after receiving the shots.
The brains of the surviving animals were examined microscopically and chemically after two to eight weeks. The nerve endings where the dopamine is processed were destroyed, said Ricaurte.
"There hasn't been a single animal that escaped the dopamine (cell) lesions," he said.
Ricaurte said the damage was not enough to cause Parkinson's symptoms, but there is "a clinical concern" that repeated use of Ecstasy will diminish the natural reserve of brain cells and lead to early disease.
Holland said Ricaurte's study in monkeys and baboons does not relate to the experience of human recreational users of Ecstasy.
"The dose that he gave killed 20 percent of the animals immediately," said Holland. "Clearly these animals reacted to the drug differently than humans because not one out of five Ecstasy users drops dead."
Also, she said Ricaurte's study injected Ecstasy, while most human users take the drug orally. Drugs taken orally are less concentrated in the body than drugs that are injected, said Holland.
The NYU psychiatrist said "there is a lot of politics involved" in Ricaurte's study because the government does not want to allow medical research with Ecstasy, even though it has been approved for study by the Food and Drug Administration.
Ricaurte's research has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the agency Leshner once headed. Leshner is now chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the organization that publishes Science, the journal printing Ricaurte's current study on Ecstasy.
Credits to cnn.com
Soo .. what are your thoughts guys ? Personally I dont do "E" and im gratefull for it, if this thing is true.. I guess we'll have to see the effects in a couple of years. |
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| Dmatrox |
Ive never done drugs or Ecstasy. I saw how one girl in my class before was depressed a lot from taking E.
The discovery is not new anyways but it outlines very nicely and clearly the experiment and results.
Drugs also makes you do do. |
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| jploveparade |
Getting drunk each weekend is far worse than taking E when you go out.
Why?
-Alcohol is addictive
-Alcohol makes aggressive
-Alcohol does damage to your internal organs
-Drunk drivers kill many people each year
etc etc
The braindamage you get in the long term can't be any worse than the dead cells caused by alcohol |
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| Ekstasis |
Anything consumed in mass quanity is bad for you. Sure, if you go out every weekend and eat 5 pills a night. Your going to hurt your self. as long as your responsable about it, and smart about it, you'll be fine.
Its just like Nutrasweet causing cancer in rats. Those rats were fed their body weight in Nutrasweet. Of course it fugged them up. Thats just common sense. |
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| High Spirit |
| quote: | Originally posted by jploveparade
Getting drunk each weekend is far worse than taking E when you go out.
Why?
-Alcohol is addictive
-Alcohol makes aggressive
-Alcohol does damage to your internal organs
-Drunk drivers kill many people each year
etc etc
The braindamage you get in the long term can't be any worse than the dead cells caused by alcohol |
I'm totally agree with you. I asked so many people:"Do you know how it works in your body, do you know why do you feel good?" Most people told me that they are taking just because it's good.. My point is, no matter what kind of psychodelic substance people are taking, the level of knowlage and responsibility should be there. Otherwise all sorts of demages might be done during a very short period of time...
P.S. and you don't have to graduate from "E college" in order to know that, there's so many places on the internet with articles and research papers, just read it up.. ;o)
Good luck. |
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| Arbiter |
| quote: | Originally posted by Ekstasis
Anything consumed in mass quanity is bad for you. Sure, if you go out every weekend and eat 5 pills a night. Your going to hurt your self. as long as your responsable about it, and smart about it, you'll be fine.
Its just like Nutrasweet causing cancer in rats. Those rats were fed their body weight in Nutrasweet. Of course it fugged them up. Thats just common sense. |
Yes, you are very correct. It seems that, in the interest of proving their hypotheses right, many researchers are using the following method in order to conduct experiments about whether or not a material may be hazardous to one's health:
1. Determine how much water you can give a certain animal before it will die.
2. Multiply the result by pi.
3. Administer that dosage of substance X to that animal.
Their conclusion, when the animal dies, is that substance X is hazardous. This, however, is a fallacious conclusion. The correct conclusion would have been that tremendous quantities of substance X are hazardous to the particular animal used in the experiment. Any other conclusion is incompliant with the fundamentals of science. |
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| Maaz |
| quote: | Originally posted by Arbiter
Yes, you are very correct. It seems that, in the interest of proving their hypotheses right, many researchers are using the following method in order to conduct experiments about whether or not a material may be hazardous to one's health:
1. Determine how much water you can give a certain animal before it will die.
2. Multiply the result by pi.
3. Administer that dosage of substance X to that animal.
Their conclusion, when the animal dies, is that substance X is hazardous. This, however, is a fallacious conclusion. The correct conclusion would have been that tremendous quantities of substance X are hazardous to the particular animal used in the experiment. Any other conclusion is incompliant with the fundamentals of science. |
I think I got it wrong: doesn't this experiment say that water is hazardous then? If you determine how much water you can give to a certain animal before it will die and multiply the result by pi, you have enough water to kill it "pi" times :p |
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| Mail Man |
there was a topic about E "the cubbers pill" (BBC news called it that). The reporter talked about how the pills damaged monkeys and how this is the same for ppl. they were also talking to a guy who claims to take 5 pills of E a night.
If they want to find out the damages it does, TEST IT ON A HUMAN. im sure there are loads of users of the drug who would be happy to let the scientists check how there body reacts to the substance. |
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| DuMonde TrAnCeR |
yeh i remember last time when some american reserachers made a publication on ecstacy, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA...
haha.... |
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| DuMonde TrAnCeR |
| quote: | Originally posted by Ekstasis
Anything consumed in mass quanity is bad for you. Sure, if you go out every weekend and eat 5 pills a night. Your going to hurt your self. as long as your responsable about it, and smart about it, you'll be fine.
Its just like Nutrasweet causing cancer in rats. Those rats were fed their body weight in Nutrasweet. Of course it fugged them up. Thats just common sense. |
This Guy Knows the Score! thankyou! :D |
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| skaborough fats |
First... re the guy whose takes 5 pills a night.... WTF!
Now seriously... The practice of upping dosages in clinical studies is to shorten the time scale. Instead of doing a long term study on E, which should take at least 10 years, the researchers just upp the dosage and say its the same as a long period of time... but this is not so. Anything, anything in large dosages will kill you. You can die of water OD, in fact CNN has been following a story of a girl who dies of just that recently.
Also it should be noted that none of those animals lived beyond the experiment. To examine brain cells, you have to kill the subject and remove the brain. So, this is an extremely short term study on the effects of high dosages of E, on an animal who has a different reaction to E than do humans. 1 in 5 died... to the best of my knowledge no human has died from just E, it has been from OD on E+ other substances, or from heat stroke (which kills completely healthy, non-drug using people standing on street corners ).
There is a risk in everything. I'm willing to assume that risk... for science of course. From a purely altruistis motivation, I must... it's really for all of you out there. I just hope you all appreciate what were out there doing for you people. :toocool:
Cheers,
Fats |
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| Dmatrox |
| quote: | Originally posted by jploveparade
Getting drunk each weekend is far worse than taking E when you go out.
Why?
-Alcohol is addictive
-Alcohol makes aggressive
-Alcohol does damage to your internal organs
-Drunk drivers kill many people each year
etc etc
The braindamage you get in the long term can't be any worse than the dead cells caused by alcohol |
I dont totally agree, but partially,
Heres what i thought of.
Getting drunk, you get a hangover the next day
Taking E, you become deppressed for two weeks
Alcohol is addictive because people use it as a way to escape
Undoubtedly, this is the same for E
EXCESS Alcohol damages your organs
Any E damages your brain and supresses negative feedback of dopamine |
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