Popular club drug shown to impair brain function

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

Ecstasy has been linked to memory loss and brain damage in the first human studies of the popular party drug.

Long-lasting effects on animals' brains have been proven and these are now starting to show up in preliminary studies of use by humans.

New Zealand experts are not surprised by the human studies' findings and have repeated warnings about Ecstasy, which has become the country's third most popular illegal drug after cannabis and speed (methamphetamine).

Ecstasy researchers in Canada checking memory impairment have found that participants' test scores declined or remained static, but did not improve, throughout a year-long study.

Their study, published in the journal Neurology, tested 15 people who took Ecstasy on average 2.4 times a month.

A British study found the learning ability of the Ecstasy users was impaired. Ex-users suffered memory impairment even a year or more after giving up the drug, although this may have been due to underlying differences in those people.

But lead researcher Professor Valerie Curran, of University College London, said that when combined with animal studies the evidence of long-lasting effects in humans was growing.

USA Today reports that a brain scan study at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York found that people had a decreased blood flow to their brains two weeks after taking a low dose of Ecstasy.

Detective Sergeant Tony Quayle, of New Zealand's National Drug Intelligence Bureau, said yesterday that around 30,000 tablets and capsules of Ecstasy had been seized in the past 12 months. Virtually all imported, the drug cost $80 to $120 a tablet on the streets here.

Three people in NZ have died after taking Ecstasy and forensic tests will determine whether an Auckland man who died last weekend had taken the drug.

Dr Les Galler, an Auckland Hospital intensive care specialist, said long-term use of Ecstasy or other drugs that affected brain function, including alcohol, would "start to rot your brain".

But the hospital was seeing more people suffering from the ill-effects of Fantasy and related drugs than Ecstasy, he said.

This might be because Ecstasy was illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act but Fantasy had not yet been outlawed.

Each weekend, the hospital treats about 10 users of Fantasy-type drugs, some in a coma or suffering a seizure.

Neuropsychiatrist Dr Greg Finucane said Ecstasy was often thought of as enjoyable and with minimal adverse effects, as long as users took precautions such as drinking water.

"Certainly this sort of evidence [the human studies] shows that putting anything into your brain that changes brain function over a long period of time is going to have longer-term adverse effects on brain functioning."

Dr Finucane said he had seen patients at Auckland Hospital who had suffered brain damage - causing symptoms including significant impairment of memory and concentration - from drugs in the same class as Ecstasy, but they had taken large doses.