RESEARCHERS RETRACT STUDY TYING ECSTASY TO PARKINSON'S

Hopkins Doctors Used Mislabeled Drugs in Tests

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center have been
forced to retract a highly publicized paper linking the drug Ecstasy
to serious brain damage after discovering that they had actually
administered a different drug to most of the animals in their study.

In a retraction scheduled for publication next week in the prestigious
journal Science - which ran the original results a year ago - the team
led by Hopkins neurologist George A. Ricaurte says that a vial labeled
as MDMA, the active chemical in Ecstasy, actually contained
methamphetamine, a similar but chemically distinct drug known as
"speed." Researchers said the vials were apparently mislabeled by a
supplier.

The retraction states that the mislabeled drug was used on all but one
of the 15 primates in the two-year study. Although the methamphetamine
would be expected to have effects similar to Ecstasy's, the
researchers said, the results of the study were invalidated by the
labeling error.

Influential and widely publicized at the time, the Hopkins study was
seized on by health officials who argue that the drug causes serious,
long-term brain damage, a conclusion that is not universal in the
scientific community. The study was funded by the National Institute
on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

Minor corrections are common in Science, but Ginger Pinholster,
director of public programs for the journal, said she could recall
"maybe a handful" of retractions in the past four years.

The professional journal, with 140,000 subscribers, is published by
the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of
the most influential publications of its kind the world. Pinholster
credited the scientists with "doing the right thing."

"These researchers should be applauded for coming forward the way they
did," she said.

Dr. Una D. McCann, one of the study's co-authors, said she worries
that the false results may mislead other researchers and erode public
confidence in drug research. "We're very regretful about what it might
have done, not only to our scientific colleagues, but to the public at
large," she said.

In their original paper, the researchers said that when MDMA was given
to squirrel monkeys and baboons, it produced the same sort of brain
damage seen in people who suffer from Parkinson's disease.

They said the doses they used were similar to those taken by young
people during all-night "rave" parties - three doses at three-hour
intervals.

In their retraction, the scientists said the labeling error does not
invalidate past studies concluding that Ecstasy can have serious
effects on brain function in rats. McCann said the error does mean
that it remains to be established whether Ecstasy has similar effects
on primates.

According to their retraction statement, the scientists began to
suspect something was amiss after the original study was published
when they couldn't reproduce the results using orally-administered
doses of the drug instead of injections.

Realizing that they were using a new batch of MDMA, they had it tested
and found it authentic. So they returned to the original study and
found records showing that both drugs - MDMA and methamphetamine -
had been ordered on the same date and arrived at the lab from the
supplier inthe same package. The two bottles had different labels and
batch numbers. They were stored in a locked laboratory safe.

Suspecting that the labels had been switched, the scientists had the
contents of the original methamphetamine vial tested. It proved to
contain MDMA. But the original vial of MDMA had been used up and
discarded, so the researchers tested frozen brains from two of the
animals that had originally received the supposed MDMA. They contained
no trace of MDMA but did contain traces of methamphetamine.

The two drugs were supplied to the Hopkins lab by Research Triangle
Institute International (RTI) of North Carolina and paid for under a
contract with NIDA.

"We know all the supplies come from RTI. We don't know where the
errors occurred," said Beverly Jackson, a NIDA spokesman. "Everybody
needs to take a close look at what happened."

Representatives from RTI could not be reached for comment last
night.

Research into Ecstasy has been controversial, with some physicians
arguing that funding targeted at finding problems with the drug is
politically motivated and that neurological damage has been
exaggerated.

Dr. Charles Grob, a Hopkins-trained psychiatrist on the faculty at the
UCLA School of Medicine and longtime critic of Ecstasy research, said
that many studies of the drug at Hopkins have been flawed, targeting
the drug's ill effects and discouraging research into its possible
therapeutic value.

Grob said MDMA may have applications for patients suffering from
severe anxiety or trauma. "It's been a seriously hyped issue," he
said. "We have a drug war going on, and it's hard to shift gears and
examine a drug in an entirely different context, where it could be
useful for psychiatric treatment," he said.

The other investigators in the Hopkins study were Doctors Jie Yuan and
George Hatzidimitriou of the Hopkins Department of Neurology and
Branden J. Cord of the Department of Neurosciences.