THE AGONY & THE ECSTACY

Illegal drug linked to brain damage

Scientists have warned that a favourite drug of the young, ecstasy,
could trigger long-term damage to vital brain cells called serotonin
neurons.

Serotonin is a brain chemical important in controlling mood. Although
there is still no hard evidence, researchers believe this damage could
lead to impaired memory, loss of self-control, increased anxiety,
sleeplessness, appetite problems and even long-term psychiatric illness.

Ecstasy is the popular name for the "recreational" drug
methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA. It is taken, sometimes on a
weekly basis, by hundreds of thousands of young people in Europe and
the United States. There has been a small number of deaths linked to
the drug.

But evidence from Britain, Italy and the U.S. is beginning to tell a
different story. Tests on animals - rats, guinea pigs, monkeys and
baboons - have repeatedly and uniformly shown damage to parts of the
brain that work with serotonin.

Rat brain cells seem to recover. But Prof. Una McCann of the National
Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, said that seven
years after being treated to a four-day course of drugs, every monkey
in a series of labs across the world had shown signs of irreversible
damage.

She and colleagues told a conference in London last week that tests
and brain scans on human volunteers show similar damage.

George Ricaurte of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore,
said many neuroscientists are concerned at the possible effect of this
damage: users could be at greater risk of mood and sleep disturbance,
impulse control, aggressive tendencies and anxiety.

The catch is that scientists can only work with volunteers who have
already become worried about the drug's effects. But they are in no
doubt that ecstasy claims victims.

Dr. Fabrizio Schifano, who heads an addiction treatment unit in Padua,
Italy, said that at a conservative estimate 50,000 to 85,000 young
Italians took ecstasy in clubs every Saturday night.

More than half of a group of 150 in Padua who had used the drug at
least once suffered from depression, psychotic disorders, cognitive
disturbances, bulimic episodes, impulse control disorders and social
phobia.

Ricaurte said: "I know of no other recreational drugs that prune
serotonin nerve cells in the brain, and do so without producing any
immediate and obvious change to the user to alert him or her that
brain injury."

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady