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Published online 13 November 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1229
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Illegal drug shows promise in treating trauma symptoms
MDMA may boost the benefits of psychotherapy, trial suggests.
The controversial drug MDMA - known to recreational users as 'ecstasy' - can help ease the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to the first phase-II clinical trial into the potential therapeutic benefits of using the drug as an adjunct to psychotherapy.
Most patients in the trial who were given psychotherapy treatment along with doses of MDMA (3, 4-methylenedioxy-N-methyl amphetamine) experienced statistically significant reductions in the severity of their condition after two months, compared with a control group who received psychotherapy and a placebo.
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Abuse usability factor should always be put into consideration in this drug as it might post more physiological disorder cascades..
These results are so "brilliant" that one should take great care and be very cautious before believing all that sunshine and jump to (dangerous) conclusions. If these 23 patients were really "therapy resistant" it is remarkable that 1/4 of them got better after just placebo sessions. How was therapy resistance defined ? We have no details about the study (randomization and allocation scheme: was this a real RCT study ? Deviations from RCT blinding and randomization are well known to add substantially to the outcome weighting of the test-product. Although every therapy that could help patients with PTSD is worth considering here I would advise to be really very cautious and not shout victory or preemptively open the gates of our clinics to MBMA. The funding agency is not really what one could call "neutral". Dr. G. Otte neuropsychiatrist Belgium
These findings are exciting and important. Negatively valenced emotions which chronically persist reduce quality of life and lead to diagnosable psychiatric disorders. This should be obvious by the simple fact that stress is inextricably linked to numerous psychiatric disorders, especially the mood and anxiety disorders. Therefore Increasing extinction rates of negatively valenced emotions should be a main goal for modern psychiatry. Current treatments are inadequate and beholden to a model of chronic pharmaceutical drug treatment. In many cases a better model might be for drug-facilitated psychotherapy, where an acutely acting drug would be given at or near the time of psychotherapy to increase learning and reduce fear during the psycho-therapeutic process. This model is starting to gain momentum with the use of D-cycloserine to enhance extinction rates in patients with simple phobias and social phobia. Regardless of who funded this study, the more important question is why the NIH is not funding more studies like this, or better yet why more preclinical studies examining MDMA or MDMA-like drugs in animal models of fear/anxiety/depression are not being funded. Most studies of MDMA in animal models have been focused on inducing serotonergic cell death by using excessive doses of MDMA that are non-clinically relevant. This is comparable to studying the effects of aspirin, but only investigating doses that induce liver damage (something is wrong here). MDMA may not be a panacea, but let?s do the research so we can adequately assess its potential. Jon Ploski ? Yale University