DRUG ECSTASY DAMAGES MEMORY BRAIN CELLS-DUTCH STUDY

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The popular club drug "ecstasy" causes temporary
injury to brain cells, but the result is long-term damage to memory,
Dutch researchers said Sunday.

Memory tests and brain scans performed on 22 subjects who had
recently used ecstasy revealed they suffered memory deficiencies and
changes in certain brain cells.

The scans showed the damage was most pronounced on cortical neurons
linked to memory function. In ecstasy users, those brain cells had a
decreased density of receptors for the neurotransmitter serotonin,
which transports messages between cells and is known to affect mood.

Previous research has suggested that ecstasy causes a flood of
serotonin in the brain, followed by a drop-off when the drug wears
off. Brain scans performed on 16 former ecstasy users who had
abstained from the drug for at least a year did not show lasting
damage to the serotonin receptors in cortical neurons.

But ex-users did not perform as well on memory tests as 13 control
subjects who had never used the drug. While the neurons of ex-users
seemed to recover, the consequences on memory from the earlier
ecstasy use may be irreversible, study author Liesbeth Reneman of the
Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam said.

The longer that ecstasy was used and the higher the dosages, the
worse the memory impairment, the study found.

"We identified that MDMA (ecstasy) use is associated not only with
short-term consequences (on memory) but with long-term consequences
as well," Reneman wrote in the October issue of the medical journal
Archives of General Psychiatry.

Study participants, who ranged in age from 18 to 45, agreed not to
use psychoactive drugs for three weeks prior to the testing. The
study noted that ecstasy users were more likely to smoke marijuana
than the controls, which might have influenced the memory test
results. Previous research has shown ecstasy, sometimes known as MDMA
or by its chemical name 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, can cause
dramatic changes in heart rate and blood pressure. It can also lead
to dehydration and has been shown to cause lasting changes in the
brain's chemical systems that control mood and memory. Animals
studies have shown damage to brain cells connected to memory function.