Ecstasy side effects

Case studies presented by Australian neurologists suggest that ecstasy (MDMA) can cause acute hippocampal toxicity. Writing in Neurology, the doctors reported the cases of two patients presenting to emergency departments with brief generalised tonic-clonic seizures (GTCS) within 12 hours of ingesting ecstasy tablets. Both patients initially showed hippocampal swelling and subsequent atrophy. The first patient, a 25-year-old man experienced a two minute GTCS five hours after taking two ecstasy tablets and eight units of alcohol. The second patient, a 25-year-old woman, presented following a GTCS 11 hours after taking one ecstasy tablet and five units of alcohol. “In both patients, the clinical and imaging presentation is consistent with acute hippocampal damage following ecstasy ingestion,” the doctors said. “Our cases suggest that ecstasy can cause acute hippocampal toxicity”. Ecstasy is a synthetic compound structurally similar to amphetamines, they said, and there is increasing evidence that, like amphetamines, moderate chronic use of the drug is associated with memory impairment. They also noted that although acute hippocampal damage has been observed within days of isolated prolonged seizures, the seizures experienced by the two patients were too brief to be related to acute hippocampal insult evolving to hippocampal sclerosis. “Although we cannot completely exclude an infectious encephalitic cause, or prolonged subclinical seizure activity, we postulate that in these cases ecstasy ingestion caused an acute toxic insult to the hippocampus, leading to the MRI changes, and initial seizures,” they concluded. Neurology 2009; 73:567-569...