edgarshade
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2010
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David Nutt's Blog: Evidence not Exaggeration
Curiouser and curiouser: Could ecstasy actually heal brains as well as minds?
May 9, 2011
[URL="http://profdavidnutt.wordpress.com/"]http://profdavidnutt.wordpress.com/[/URL]
Curiouser and curiouser: Could ecstasy actually heal brains as well as minds?
May 9, 2011
[URL="http://profdavidnutt.wordpress.com/"]http://profdavidnutt.wordpress.com/[/URL]
But what about the rats – does it still cause brain damage there? A new paper shows an intriguing effect and one, which many will find paradoxical: MDMA improved recovery from brain injury rather than worsening it [Edut et al 2011]. This paper has not apparently received any media attention so far which I why I felt compelled to do what I could to make it more widely known.
However the results are not so paradoxical if one remembers that the potential utility of such stimulant drugs to aid recovery from brain trauma was first reported over 30 years ago for amfetamine [see Gladstone and Black 2000]. I have made efforts to get stimulant drugs tested in clinical trials for the brain injured in the UK but always their controlled status makes using them difficult. Doctors are frightened, ethics committees worried, special licenses are required and are expensive and patients and relatives concerned (if it’s classified then it must be surely be dangerous?). For these reasons, we need to work to minimise the damage that legal controls on drugs have to impede research. The recent banning of mephedrone and naphyrone is likely to significantly limit new drug discovery in the area of antidepressants and anti-addiction agents [Nutt 2010, Nutt 2011].