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Discussion => Drug safety => Topic started by: SleepingMind on July 29, 2012, 05:35 am

Title: Does MDMA use disrupt the Blood-Brain Barrier ?
Post by: SleepingMind on July 29, 2012, 05:35 am
Does anyone have any insight to this aspects of MDMA use?

Links to any scientific papers / investigations would be helpful.


Thanks,
SM
Title: Re: Does MDMA use disrupt the Blood-Brain Barrier ?
Post by: sdesu on July 29, 2012, 07:09 am
MDMA can cause hyperthermia, which can lead to intense cellular stress and cause disruption of the blood-brain barrier.

Here are a couple pubmed articles.

A comparative study on the acute and long-term effects of MDMA and 3,4-dihydroxymethamphetamine (HHMA) on brain monoamine levels after i.p. or striatal administration in mice.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15665862

Neurotoxic effect of MDMA on brain serotonin neurons: evidence from neurochemical and radioligand binding studies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1979218

sdesu
Title: Re: Does MDMA use disrupt the Blood-Brain Barrier ?
Post by: Beastie on July 29, 2012, 08:59 am
https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mdma/mdma_neurotoxicity.shtml

Pure MDMA has not been shown to be vary safe and negotiable neurotoxicity. It can raise the body temp to dangerous levels tough. As long as you don't take too much, drink plenty of water, and have a nice cold room to hang out in you will be fine. MDMA was safely and effectively used in psychotherapy for many years. MDMA was not declared a Scheduled I drug because it is dangerous, instead because it has to high of an abuse rate.

I have never read anything about damaging cells along the blood brain barrier.

Aside from the hypothermia, which is certainly a dangerous side effect, MDMA has been proven to be relatively safe at recreational doses 100-200mg. The whole thing about "Holes in your brain" was from a vary poorly constructed test. First of all, it was a single test on a single chimp i.e. the results were never verified. Second they were giving the chimp massive doses of mdma nearly 50 times the normal dose. Then they killed the chimp and when they analysed the brain they discovered that the chimp's brain had this a type of damage to the serotonin receptors, and had much less serotonin then normal chimp brains. They created an artificiality coloured computer image to display areas of the chimps brain that had less then normal serotonin levels as black. So, when the... was it dateline or 20/20... news people got it they reported that MDMA creates holes in the brain and showed the image.

This test and conclusion has a few critical flaws. First, the test should have been done on hundreds of chimps on just one. Second, they should have also done tests to see if this damage is caused at normal to high recreational doses. Thirdly, the damage that was observed on the neurons is a repairable type of damage, in-fact that type of damage has already been proven to be healed several orders of magnitude faster in human brains then in chimps. Furthermore, Alcohol produces the same type of damage and at beige drinking levels the damage done is substantially more then what was observed in the chimp after the extreme repeated doses of MDMA. Finally, there also needs to be test chimps that were allowed to recover for some time, and then check to see of the same level of damage is present.

Nearly all tests that have been done on humans were on people who also abused many other drugs including heroin, methamphetamine,  and so on. Also, the tests preformed were only after the subject had been using drugs including MDMA. The reports I have read never have test results of the human subject before they used the drugs i.e. the researchers can't compare the subjects test results to results taken before the use of the drug. The psychological Q & A tests that showed the group of drug users who also used MDMA, had a higher rate of depression then the national average. I would argue that the researchers did not adequately prove the high depression rate is due to MDMA not simply showing that people who are depressed are more likely to abuse drugs, which I think would be a reasonable hypothesis. Furthermore, the physical test on humans are only scans. Researchers can not measure neurotransmitter levels in the brain, nor look for the surface damage to the serotonin receptors without physically cutting open the subjects brain i.e. the results can only evidence for a theory, never be proof.

The reason there have been so many poorly constructed research studies preformed is do to laws. It's certainly not that these researchers are stupid, or trying to be less then trustworthy. The drug laws in most nations are like the USA (because the USA forces their laws on other nations in triad agreements and the like) make it largely imposable for researchers to legally carry out proper tests evolving Schedule I drugs. Like a legitimate test would be to take 2,000 test subjects from all walks of life and who have never taken any drugs. Conduct a full examination of the subjects physical state and emotional/mental state over the course of a month to get a baseline. Then giving the subjects low to high recreational doses of MDMA twice a week for 4 weeks. Conduct a full examination of the subjects during and after each dose of MDMA. Also, bring the subjects back in to conduct a full examination 1 week, and once a month after for a year to see how the subjects recover.
Title: Re: Does MDMA use disrupt the Blood-Brain Barrier ?
Post by: sdesu on July 29, 2012, 05:20 pm
I have never read anything about damaging cells along the blood brain barrier.

I'd suggest you read about heat shock proteins. Not only are they involved in cell maintenance when under stress (heat, tissue damage, or other stressors) but they also play a key role in anti-apoptosis as well as signal transduction.

sdesu
Title: Re: Does MDMA use disrupt the Blood-Brain Barrier ?
Post by: sdesu on July 29, 2012, 05:28 pm
Here's a cool article I found in regards to MDMA and heat shock proteins.

Damage of serotonergic axons and immunolocalization of Hsp27, Hsp72, and Hsp90 molecular chaperones after a single dose of MDMA administration in Dark Agouti rat: temporal, spatial, and cellular patterns.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16705678

sdesu