Risks of Ecstasy studied

A Victoria University researcher has been given nearly $100,000 to investigate the effects of long-term exposure to the class B illegal drug Ecstasy.

"The increasing recreational use of Ecstasy poses significant public health problems," says the Neurological Foundation, which made the grant.

Dr Susan Schenk, of the university's psychology department, will use the $98,682 grant to investigate the effects of the amphetamine-type drug, also known as methylenedi-oxymethamphetamine (MDMA), on users' reasoning and brain cells.

Ecstasy affects serotonin, a brain chemical that regulates mood, emotion, sleep, appetite, memory and sexual behaviour.

Overseas researchers have reported it induces feelings of euphoria, increased energy and sexual arousal, and makes people feel a need to be touched or hugged. Ecstasy is also said to suppress the need to eat, drink, or sleep, enabling users to endure marathon dance parties.

In high doses it can cause a sharp increase in body temperature, leading to muscle breakdown, kidney and heart failure and death.

Some studies have shown it kills brain cells that release important compounds, resulting in persistent memory problems for heavy users, and possibly also trouble with verbal reasoning and attention spans.

Some neurological researchers believe use of Ecstasy may trigger in some users symptoms of Parkinson's disease, a degenerative illness that eventually kills immobilised sufferers through secondary complications such as pneumonia, septicaemia and strokes.

The Neurological Foundation said in its newsletter, Headlines, that Ecstasy use was on the rise in New Zealand, with a five-fold increase between 1990 and 1998, and the number of users increased eight-fold in the same period.

"Much of the use of MDMA occurs in night-long social gatherings known as 'raves', during which some people will take six to eight doses of MDMA during a 12-hour period.

At a Wellington conference on Parkinson's disease, a senior international researcher into the disease, Dr Jonathan Brotchie, said he did not want to be a scaremonger, but it was a "theoretical possibility" that Ecstasy could trigger Parkinson's disease symptoms in recreational drug users.

A lot would depend on the users' genetic susceptibility, and how they took the drug and in what conditions, such as whether it was mixed with other chemicals.

Parkinson's usually occurs in people aged over 40, but about 10 per cent of diagnosed cases occur in younger people.

Dr Brotchie agreed there were concerns that the use of Ecstasy among young people could lead to an increased incidence of Parkinson's-type symptoms in future years.

However, a key point of Dr Brotchie's speech to the conference was that Ecstasy, taken by a Parkinson's patient as a recreational drug, had given valuable clues of how a related compound, known as a 5HT-1A agonist, could improve the effectiveness of the main drug treatment, Levodopa (L-dopa), without Ecstasy's side-effects of changing moods or killing more brain cells.

- NZPA

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