Sublime_Phish

THURSDAY, April 13 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers say they've gained new insight into how amphetamines like ecstasy or "crystal meth" harm the brain.

In studies with mice, a team at the University of Toronto found that these drugs are converted in the brain into free radicals -- highly reactive molecules that cause neurodegenerative brain damage. The effects of this free radical damage can linger a long time after the amphetamine has left the body, the researchers say. Free radicals have been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

The Toronto team also believes that prostaglandin H synthase (PHS) -- an enzyme that synthesizes a range of hormones -- plays a critical role in the transformation of amphetamines into free radicals.

The findings appear in the April issue of the FASEB Journal, published by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

Further study is required to determine if these findings apply to humans, the researchers said.

The findings about the role of PHS in converting amphetamines into free radicals in the brain may be relevant to neurodegenerative risks associated with aging, the researchers said.

"Preliminary results from other studies suggest that PHS may convert other compounds in our brains into free radicals, and there is some evidence in the clinical literature that suggests patients who take high does of PHS-inhibiting drugs such as aspirin may experience less neurodegeneration," study lead author Professor Peter Wells, of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, said in a prepared statement.

"The potential of substances like aspirin to prevent neurodegenerative damage merits more examination, particularly among people who take it chronically for pain," Wells said.

http://health.msn.com/healthnews/ar...entid=100134084

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Troile

April 13?

Its still March.

What year is this from?

Where are the actual findings?

Governments have come up with findings like this before and it turned out to be false.

Also methamphetamine and MDMA are very different beasts.

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Sublime_Phish

It's from 2006.
If you'd like to post some of those articles, I'd love to see them! Please share.

heatheraloo

Also with these "mice studies" they give the mice such a high dosage of whatever the substance is their testing for, and actually equates to having no applicable relevance to any recreational or even over-dose usage of the drug in humans. Giving a mouse a whole shit load of water will do damage but that doesn’t mean water is harmful. One should always be a little skeptical when "scientific" studies involve mice.

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*~*CaFfEiNe KiLlS*~*

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Guardian419

drugz r bad mmmmmmkaaaaaaayyyyyyy

the architech

anyone remember that band New Radicals?
I liked them

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Radical Reconstruction

heatheraloo

me not.

liquid_nrg

Woops, old thread. My bad.

Anyways, back to my comment.

I like how when the government banned Ecstasy, they said "a similar drug causes brain damage so Ecstasy is now illegal to possess and sell."