STUDY FINDS ECSTASY MIGHT DAMAGE BRAIN

The amount of the drug Ecstasy that some recreational users take in a
single night might cause permanent brain damage and lead to symptoms like
those of Parkinson's disease, a study in primates has found.

But critics say that the monkeys and baboons in the study were given huge
overdoses of the drug and that the kind of damage the researchers found has
never been found in autopsies or brain scans of humans who took large amounts.

Dr. George Ricaurte of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who
led the study, said its most disturbing finding was that just two or three
Ecstasy tablets can damage the cells that produce dopamine, a brain
chemical that helps control movement, emotions and the ability to feel
pleasure.

To mimic the aging process, he gave some primates another drug that
destroys dopamine production, and he found that those that had taken both
Ecstasy and the dopamine-killing drug moved less than those given only the
dopamine reducer, suggesting that Ecstasy users could suffer the same
consequences as they aged. The study appears today in the journal Science.

But a psychiatrist from Bellevue Hospital in New York and the leader of an
organization that wants to test the psychiatric benefits of Ecstasy said
Ricaurte's doses -- delivered by injection, not tablet -- were far greater
than a human user could stand. Two of the 10 monkeys and baboons died of
heatstroke, they noted, and two more were in such distress that they were
not given a third shot.

Dr. Una McCann, a psychiatrist who co-wrote the new study along with her
husband, Ricaurte, said the doses were "actually slightly less" than a
human might take.

Ecstasy, also known as MDMA, is a methamphetamine. Chronic users report
never being able to repeat the pleasure of their first highs, and the drug
apparently depletes the brain's reserves of dopamine and serotonin, which
communicate pleasurable feelings.