DESPITE WARNINGS, RAVE-PARTY GOERS STILL DICE WITH DEATH

A relative of the rave-party designer drug ecstasy, known on the street as
"death", is more life-threatening than ecstacy and produces severe side
effects, according to new research.

Two University of Adelaide medical students have conducted the first
systematic study of the clinical effects of "death"
(paramethoxyamphetamine, or PMA), finding that most users adversely
affected by it believed they had taken ecstasy
(methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA).

Both drugs are amphetamine derivatives. PMA was more likely to be
life-threatening and caused different symptoms to ecstasy, the researchers
said in an article in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Liang Han Ling and Colin Marchant, from the university's department of
clinical and experimental pharmacology, studied 22 non-fatal PMA poisonings
presenting to the Royal Adelaide Hospital emergency department over three
years.

Eleven of the patients had relatively minor symptoms such as anxiety,
agitation, hallucinations, twitching and vomiting. But the other 11 had
serious toxic reactions including seizure, arrhythmia and plummeting blood
sugar level, known as hypoglycaemia.

"Severe hyopglycaemia has never previously been reported as an adverse
effect of PMA," the researchers reported.

PMA is chemically similar to MDMA but its adverse symptoms are more
frequent, more severe and may have extra effects. The researchers warned
that while rave-party goers have been educated to take breaks and drink
water to minimise ecstasy's toxic effects, the same measures will not work
for "death".

"Much of the serious toxicity we describe with PMA, such as sudden collapse
and seizures, may not be amenable to such harm-minimisation approaches,"
they said.

Deaths from PMA have been reported most frequently in Adelaide, but also in
Queensland and Western Australia.

The researchers said despite suspicions that PMA was more poisonous, its
effects had never before been investigated.