NEW HOPE FOR ECSTASY OVERDOSE TREATMENT

RESEARCHERS have identified a protein that may play a role in the sometimes
fatal hyperthermia that is caused by overdoses of the club drug Ecstasy.

Experiments at Ohio Northern University show that mice bred without the
protein called UCP-3 heat up less after they have been injected with doses
of Ecstasy that kill normal rodents.

The mouse studies are the earliest steps to finding a potential therapy to
help humans who develop the irreversible complication after an Ecstasy
overdose.

When the body overheats enough, skeletal muscle breaks down and organs fail,
leading to an agonizing death, said Ted Mills, a U.S. National Heart, Lung
and Blood Institute researcher and co-author of the study appearing today in
the journal Nature.

"By isolating this protein, we might be able to see whether, in fact, we can
block this hyperthermia from occurring," Mills said. "Nobody's been able to
do that before."

But there are relatively few deaths from overheating considering the
enormous amount of Ecstasy produced and used around the world, said David
Grandy, a molecular biologist at Oregon Health & Science University, which
was not involved in the study.