MDMA/Ectasy could lead to new treatments for Parkinson's disease

Aug 4 2005

Researchers at Duke University have revealed new clues about Parkinson's disease which might one day lead to new treatments.

Based in tests done on mice, cell biologist Tatyana Sotnikova,says the drug known as ecstasy, may sponsor new Parkinson's treatments.

However Tatyana Sotnikova, and researchers at Duke certainly don't recommend ecstasy for people with Parkinson's. The tests they say were done on mice, not people, and ecstasy can be dangerous for the brain.

In Parkinson's disease, certain brain cells falter and die and are then unable to do their job, of making a chemical called dopamine.

The brain uses dopamine to guide movement, and a dopamine deficit scrambles the brain's movement signals to the rest of the body.

Parkinson's has no cure, but drugs can help manage symptoms, many of those drugs, including levodopa, treat the brain's dopamine shortfall.

However, complications from long-term levodopa use can also hinder motion.

In this new study, the researchers first slashed dopamine levels in mice which did not have a gene needed to transport dopamine.

The mice were given drugs that knocked out most dopamine production, and that left the mice with a condition very like Parkinson's disease.

They were then given drugs to see what eased their movement symptoms, and it was found that Levodopa and other drugs that affect dopamine worked, as did several amphetamines.

The researchers, were surprised when they saw the biggest results with MDMA. MDMA (3-4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine) is a synthetic, psychoactive drug chemically similar to the stimulant methamphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline. Street names for MDMA include Ecstasy, Adam and XTC.

Amphetamines didn't work like levodopa and the other dopamine drugs. Instead of traveling through the brain's dopamine system, amphetamines took another route, but the path isn't clear yet.

Many questions of course remain, starting with the danger to the brain from ecstasy.

In order to ease the mice's symptoms, the researchers had to give the mice high levels of ectasy, and those drug levels could be much too much for the brain.

The researchers say that in general mice are less sensitive to ecstasy's toxic effects.

Sotnikova and colleagues say work also needs to be done to understand how ecstasy works, and once scientists find that out, they might be able to create new Parkinson's drugs.

The report appears in Public Library of Science Biology.