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veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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Ecstasy effect amplified by loud music
#5304928 - 02/15/06 10:09 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Ecstasy effect amplified by loud music February 16, 2006 - dehavilland.co.uk
The effects of the drug ecstasy are prolonged by up to five days by loud music, a new study suggests.
Research by scientists in Italy indicates that loud music prolongs the effects of MDMA, or ecstasy, in rats by up to five days.
Writing in the journal BMC Neuroscience, Michelangelo Iannone from the Institute of Neurological Science and colleagues from University Magna Graecia in Catanzaro outline the effects of Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or ecstasy) on the brain activity of rats.
The researchers injected rats with saline or a low dose (3mg/kg) or a high dose (6mg/kg) of MDMA.
They found that those exposed to white noise and a high dose of MDMA demonstrated a reduction in brain activity compared with the other groups and the effects of the drug lasted up to five days after it was administered.
The rats were played white noise - sound at a stable frequency that is used in many types of electronic music - at 95dB, the maximum noise intensity permitted in nightclubs by Italian law.
When no music was played to the rats, the effects of the drug appeared to wear off within a day and electrocortical activity (EcoG spectrum) returned to normal.
Low-dose MDMA did not modify the brain activity of the rats, as long as no music was played, but the EcoG total spectrum significantly decreased once loud music was played.
A mother from Edinburgh was jailed this week for three years and nine months after being found guilty of supplying ecstasy and the date rape drug Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB).
Lisa Macdonald, 34, pleaded guilty to the charges against her after police found ?18,000 of ecstasy at a flat in Viewcraig Gardens that she had been using as a safe house.track
* Related story: Disco Rats Last Longer On Ecstasy
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biglo
Shroomery BabySitter



Registered: 11/22/02
Posts: 603
Loc: US of A
Last seen: 8 years, 5 months
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Re: Ecstasy effect amplified by loud music [Re: veggie]
#5308688 - 02/16/06 08:54 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Gee, I wonder, if a rat is blasted with sound for 5 days and gets no sleep, no wonder it might not be metabolized so quick under that much stress.
Godamnit, just rembember "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics"
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koppie
astral projectile


Registered: 07/23/04
Posts: 2,653
Loc: cloud hidden
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Re: Ecstasy effect amplified by loud music [Re: biglo]
#5310230 - 02/17/06 12:04 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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From New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18925393.800
Quote:
Ecstasy and loud music are a bad mix 16 February 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition Andy Coghlan PARTYGOERS who take the recreational drug ecstasy may face a greater risk of long-term brain damage if they bombard themselves with loud music all night long.
The warning follows experiments in rats that were simultaneously exposed to loud noise and MDMA, aka ecstasy. The noise both intensified and prolonged the effects of the drug on the animals' brains.
Michelangelo Iannone of Italy's Institute of Neurological Science in Catanzaro and his colleagues gave rats varying doses of MDMA while bombarding them with white noise for 3 hours at the maximum volume permitted in Italian nightclubs.
Those given the highest dose of ecstasy, equivalent to the average amount taken by a partygoer on a night out, experienced a slump in electrical power of the cerebral cortex for up to five days after the noise was switched off. Previous studies suggest that such loss of power is related to brain hyperactivity and can ultimately lead to depression.
Rats on high doses that were not exposed to noise, and those exposed to noise but given lower doses of MDMA, experienced equally large slumps in brain power, but these only lasted for about one day (BMC Neuroscience, DOI :10.1186/1471-2202-7-13).
Since the experiments were in rats, it is hard to work out what the results mean for humans, but they do suggest that we need to know more about how ecstasy users are affected by their environment. "The most important finding is that the effects of MDMA can be strengthened by common environmental factors, such as noise in discotheques," says Iannone.
His findings echo previous research by Jenny Morton of the University of Cambridge, who discovered that a combination of methamphetamine (or speed) and loud, pulsing music is much more damaging to mice than either stimulus alone (New Scientist, 3 November 2001, p 17). White noise had no effect on the mice in her experiments. "If Iannone's team had used loud, pulsing noise, their effects would probably have been even stronger," she says.
She agrees that more research into the combined effect of music and drugs on humans is needed. "It would be tragic to find that taking ecstasy in clubs as a teenager significantly increased the risk of mental illness in later life," she says.
Andy Parrott at the University of Wales in Swansea, UK, has carried out an analysis of the combined effects of ecstasy and environmental factors, which is expected to be published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology in April. "From the long-term health perspective, dances and raves may well be the worst venues in which to take MDMA," he says. "Dancing, heat and noise may all boost the acute effects of MDMA, but these same factors will also exacerbate the long-term adverse effects."
Weblinks Iannone et al study, Biomed Central http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/7/13
Now I'm wondering whether white noise has the same effects as music. I imagine white noise at high levels to be much more stressful to a rat.
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