Ecstasy does not damage brain, robust study says

Ecstasy has been popular for a generation. Photo / NZ Herald

There is no evidence that the drug Ecstasy causes brain damage, according to one of the largest studies into its effects.

Too many previous studies made over-arching conclusions from insufficient data, say the scientists responsible for the research, and the dangers have been exaggerated.

Campaigners have claimed Ecstasy poses a real risk of triggering brain damage, can induce memory loss, decrease cognitive performance and has long-lasting effects on behaviour.

The study was done by a team led by Professor John Halpern of Harvard Medical School and published in the journal Addiction.

Funded by a US$1.8 million ($2.4 million) grant from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, it was launched specifically to avoid methodological drawbacks that have bedevilled previous attempts to pinpoint whether Ecstasy users suffer brain damage.

Ecstasy came into widespread use in the 1980s when taking it was linked to raves and the playing of electronic rock music. In the US alone, more than 12 million have taken it.

Professor Halpern was sharply critical of the quality of the research that had linked Ecstasy to brain damage. "Too many studies have been carried out on small populations, while overarching conclusions have been drawn from them," he said.

For a start, some previous research has studied users who were taken from a culture dominated by all-night dancing, which thus exposed these individuals to sleep and fluid deprivation - factors that are themselves known to produce long-lasting cognitive effects.

Non-users were not selected from those from a similar background, which therefore skewed results. Only Ecstasy users who took no other drugs and who had suffered no previous impairment were selected.

The resulting experiment whittled down 1500 potential participants to 52 selected users, whose cognitive abilities matched those of a group of 59 non-users.

"Essentially we compared one group of people who danced and raved and took Ecstasy with a similar group of individuals who danced and raved but who did not take Ecstasy," he said. "We found that there was no difference in their cognitive abilities."

HIGHS AND LOWS

* 1912: First synthesis of MDMA by a German chemist Anton Kollisch.

* 1970: Drug first detected in tablets seized in Chicago.

* 1977: UK makes MDMA a Class A drug.

* 1984: Term Ecstasy coined in California.

* 1989: Raves and electronic dance music, and Ecstasy which fuels them, lead to a second "summer of love" in Britain.

* 2005: In a survey of 500 Edinburgh students, 36 per cent said they had taken Ecstasy. Of those, 75 per cent considered it a "positive force".

- OBSERVER