Can MDMA cause Neurotoxicity? Serious Question.

[rrandy]

I'm writing this with my phone so I'll keep the paragraph style for now.

1. I should have expressed myself more precisely. Of course there are more comparable animals, what I meant was the comparability among the animals with which studies on neurotoxicity were done.

2. I couldn't find the actual study, but apparently it was one funded by maps as mentioned here:
http://www.maps.org/news/bulletin/a...y-findings-from-primate-neurotoxicity-studies

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

Maybe it just was never published in a journal

There is evidence that suggests you can get behavioral effects of MDMA without crossing into neurotoxic territory so hopefully the regulators agree with said evidence and get MDMA approved for treating PTSD at reasonable doses, I wouldn't panic if the neurotoxic territory is a couple hundred milligrams higher than the behavioral doses - I'm sure its much better to treat the PTSD

 

[rrandy]

I think part of the reason for the "panic" is that the neurotoxicity threshold in humans is generally considered to be much lower than in smaller primates.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

I don't know about the neurotoxic threshold being lower in humans than e.g. squirrel monkeys but humans certainly tend to put themselves in the exacerbating environments (hot raves)

 

[rrandy]

^This seems to be the consensus.

Primates don't seem to be susceptible to ambient temperature changes in contrast to rodents though. I can post the studies when I have computer access.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

Primates don't seem to be susceptible to ambient temperature changes in contrast to rodents though.

MDMA causes hyperthermia in primates (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1551973/) but I'm confused, are you positing that elevating ambient temperature doesn't increase amphetamine related neurodegeneration in primates?

As an aside, there could be protections associated with high brain volume/being a human vs. a rat, as an example rats are well known to develop Olney's lesions with high dose NMDA antagonists (ketamine) but higher primates and humans don't really seem to be liable to develop Olney's lesions (not that there can't still be adverse effects of NMDA antagonist abuse, I just still think most people bark up the wrong tree with focus on neurotoxicity)

 

[rrandy]

MDMA causes hyperthermia in primates (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1551973/) but I'm confused, are you positing that elevating ambient temperature doesn't increase amphetamine related neurodegeneration in primates?

The body temperature increases regardless of ambient temperature (http://thedea.org/docs/2005_Freedman_22686_1.pdf) or locomotor activity (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1853374/) if I understood the studies correctly. You could probably analyze them a lot better.

I´m not really focussing on neurotoxicity anymore, though it takes some time to get away from that initial thought which was engrained in my mind in the last months. I´m treating this as dp/dr right now, it´s crazy how people get the same symptoms without drug use (you mentioned that often, but only recently did I research dp/dr).
But I think it´s still important to point out that neurotoxicity can occur at doses taken by a lot of people.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

Neurotoxicity could certainly occur at some of these doses we hear about like 2g in one night but the funny thing is that even then it could be that the persisting symptoms aren't really due to decreased serotonergic release, for all we know the symptoms could have mostly to do with a reactive gliosis or compensatory alteration in neurobiology that takes time to settle

 

[rrandy]

Neurotoxicity could certainly occur at some of these doses we hear about like 2g in one night but the funny thing is that even then it could be that the persisting symptoms aren't really due to decreased serotonergic release, for all we know the symptoms could have mostly to do with a reactive gliosis or compensatory alteration in neurobiology that takes time to settle

As I said there are good reasons to believe it can occur at much lower doses though and so I´m with you when you say that people shouldn´t take more than 120mg. Or maybe we really have some magical protection because of our higher developed brain, but I rather believe the thesis that smaller animals clear out MDMA faster and are less susceptible than humans.