Long-term ecstasy use 'raises risk of brain damage and Alzheimer's'

[Turborama]

Source: The Guardian

Dutch researchers find that the hippocampus of long-term ecstasy users is 10.5% smaller than peers who don't use drug

Denis Campbell, health correspondent

Long-term Ecstasy users risk brain damage, memory loss and an increased chance of developing Alzheimer's disease, new research suggests.

Dutch researchers used MRI scans to study the brains of 10 men in their mid-20s who had taken an average of 281 ecstasy tablets over the previous six and a half years, and seven peers who had taken other drugs.

They found that the hippocampus - the part of the brain controlling memory - was 10.5% smaller among the ecstasy users, and their overall grey matter 4.6% less.

"These data provide preliminary evidence that Ecstasy users may be prone to incurring hippocampal damage", and may help explain the memory loss witnessed among such people in previous studies, the co-authors wrote in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/apr/06/ecstasy-brain-damage-memory-loss-alzheimers

[reggie the dog]

1. MDMA is a great drug for its effects

but i have never done it more than 3 times in a given year, many years i havent done it at all. This is an interesting study but i doubt he was taking pure mdma, ecstacy is cut with meth a lot of the time.

[WheelWalker]

9. Agree with all points.

[Turbineguy]

2. The obvious answer to this dilemma

is to legalize this stuff and make sure the users have guns.

[reggie the dog]

11. legalize it and educate people about it

http://alcoholism.about.com/od/brain/Brain_Damage_and_Alcohol_Consumption.htm

as you can see legal alcohol also causes brain damage if abused. It sounds like the person in the study did a lot of ecstacy, an average of once every 1.15 weeks (every 8 days) for 6 years.

how many of his pills were cut with meth against his desire? what was in the pills other than mdma which is what gives the desiered effect.

this is also just one person, perhaps he had a brain disorder and takes ecstacy to make himself "feel normal"

more study is needed. does it harm you if you do it 3 or 4 times a year? what is a safe level of use? when does it become dangerous?


were it legal again like in the 80's it would be a lot easier to study and people would get pure mdma not shit pills cut with junk they dont want

[callous taoboy]

13. Ha! Great answer. Your sig line cracks me up.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

3. So it has similar effects on the brain as alcohol?

Which also causes hippocampus damage. Yet, they've not been able to actually link the shrinkage with a predisposition to Alzheimer's. The damage on the brain caused by alcohol simply resembles Alzheimer's. However, oddly, if a person stops abusing alcohol they often regain their mental functions over time. Which does not happen when one suffers from Alzheimer's.

[JackInGreen]

5. I was JUST thinking

how many different systems are damaged and long term consequences exist for periodic alcohol poisoning....

[dipsydoodle]

4. Good job that don't happen with M & M's

.

[tridim]

7. Or Cannabis. nt

[Kali]

6. 10 subjects in their 20s = long term?

:wtf:

no what this "study" does show is exactly NOT MUCH, perhaps a possible direction to go for more studies, but not much else.

this is more like a great example of what is wrong with science/med reporting (and comprehension)

[Duer 157099]

8. Wait. The control group took "other drugs?"

Maybe the "other drugs" caused their hippocampi to grow larger.

[Paradoxical]

10. That is a lot of MDMA. About one a week on average.

This should not surprise anyone.

[reggie the dog]

12. mdma was originally a prescription drug for people

doing psychotherapy, i would have thought that mdma was a safe drug. how many milligrams of mdma was this person taking? was it cut?