Drug can affect memory and result in early psychotic symptoms, researchers say  

From HealthDay

People who use marijuana for a long time can develop abnormalities in their brains, Australian researchers report.

Although growing literature suggests that long-term marijuana use is associated with a wide range of adverse health consequences, many people believe it is relatively harmless and should be legalized, the researchers noted.

“However, this study shows long-term, heavy cannabis use causes significant brain injury, memory loss, difficulties learning new information, and psychotic symptoms, such as delusions of persecution [paranoia], delusions of mind-reading, and bizarre social behaviors in even non-vulnerable users,” said lead researcher Murat Yucel, from the ORYGEN Research Centre and the Neuropsychiatry Centre at the University of Melbourne.

This new evidence plays an important role in further understanding the effects of marijuana and its impact on brain functioning, Yucel said. “The study is the first to show that long-term cannabis use can adversely affect all users, not just those in the high-risk categories such as the young, or those susceptible to mental illness, as previously thought,” he said.

The report was published in the June issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

In the study, Yucel’s team did high-resolution MRIs on 15 men who smoked more than five joints a day for more than 10 years. They compared those with scans of 16 men who did not use marijuana.

In addition, all the men took verbal memory tests and were examined for symptoms of psychiatric disorders.

“The more marijuana used, the more these individuals were likely to show reduced brain volumes in the hippocampus and amygdala, as well as being more likely to develop symptoms of psychotic disorders and to have significant memory impairment,” Yucel said.

In fact, the hippocampus of marijuana users was 12 percent smaller, and the amygdala was 7.1 percent smaller than among nonusers. In addition, men who used marijuana also had symptoms of psychiatric disorders, Yucel’s group found.

The hippocampus is associated with the regulation of emotion and memory, while the amygdala controls fear and aggression.

“There is ongoing controversy concerning the long-term effects of cannabis on the brain,” Yucel said. “These findings challenge the widespread perception of cannabis as having limited or no harmful effects on brain and behavior. Although modest use may not lead to significant neurotoxic effects, these results suggest that heavy daily use might indeed be toxic to human brain tissue.”

One expert agrees that heavy marijuana use can have negative effects on the brain.

“These findings are not surprising,” said Dr. Adam Bisaga, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and an addiction psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute. “Chronic use of large amounts of any substance that is affecting neural transmission will most likely invoke adaptive changes and lead to the reorganization of neural networks, and possibly affect brain structures.”

Heavy users of marijuana probably represent only a very small proportion of users, Bisaga said.

“It is not clear if any clinically significant changes can be seen in recreational, infrequent marijuana users, who were not studied here. These findings suggest that public health education, as well as screening, early recognition, and treatment of cannabis dependence, may prevent the progression of the disease and the loss of brain function and related psychiatric complications,” Bisaga said.

Recreational use of stimulants a fixture of European nightlife, study says 

From HealthDay

Many teens and young adults in Europe are drinking alcohol and taking drugs for sexual purposes, according to a survey of more than 1,300 people who are regular nightlife-goers.

The results showed that a third of males and a quarter of females aged 16 to 35 drink alcohol to increase their chances of sex, while cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis are used to enhance sexual arousal or prolong sex.

Nearly all of the respondents reported alcohol use, with most having had their first drink when they were 14 or 15 years old. About three-quarters had tried or used cannabis, and about 30 percent had at least tried ecstasy or cocaine.

Even though many respondents believed alcohol and drugs offered sexual “benefits,” the survey found that drunkenness and drug use were strongly associated with an increase in risk-taking behavior and feelings of regret about having sex while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

For example, those who’d been drunk in the previous four weeks were more likely to have had five or more sex partners, sex without a condom, and to have regretted sex after drink or drugs in the past year. Similar consequences were noted in those who’d used cannabis, cocaine or ecstasy.

Respondents who used alcohol, cannabis, cocaine or ecstasy before age 16 were much more likely to have had sex before that age. This was especially true for girls, who were nearly four times as likely to have had sex before the age of 16, if they drank alcohol or used cannabis before that age.

The findings were published in the journal BMC Public Health.

“Trends in recent decades have resulted in recreational drug use and binge drinking becoming routine features of European nightlife,” lead author Mark Bellis, of Liverpool John Moores University, said in a prepared statement. “Millions of young Europeans now take drugs and drink in ways that alter their sexual decisions and increase their chances of unsafe sex or sex that is later regretted. Yet despite the negative consequences, we found many are deliberately taking these substances to achieve quite specific sexual effects.”

“Sexual activity accompanied by substance use is not just incidental, but often sexually motivated,” noted co-author, consultant psychiatrist Amador Calafat. “Interventions addressing sexual health are often developed, managed and implemented independently from those addressing substance use, and vice versa. However, young people often see alcohol, drugs and sex all as part of the same social experience, and addressing these issues requires an equally joined-up approach.”

From Los Angeles Times

A large and respected association of physicians is calling on the federal government to ease its strict ban on marijuana as medicine and hasten research into the drug’s therapeutic uses.

The American College of Physicians, the nation’s largest organization of doctors of internal medicine, with 124,000 members, contends that the long and rancorous debate over marijuana legalization has obscured good science that has demonstrated the benefits and medicinal promise of cannabis.

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From Medical News Today

Children with symptoms of anxiety and depression may have an increased tendency to use ecstasy in adolescence or young adulthood, finds a study published online by the BMJ today.

The use of ecstasy is associated with emotional health problems, such as depression, psychotic symptoms, and anxiety disorders. But it’s not clear whether emotional problems are a consequence of using ecstasy or emotional problems lead to ecstasy use.

Researchers in the Netherlands investigated whether use of ecstasy is preceded by symptoms of behavioural and emotional problems in childhood and early adolescence.

They assessed ecstasy use in 1580 individuals from childhood into adulthood. The first assessment took place in 1983, before ecstasy appeared as a recreational drug in the Netherlands. Use of the drug was then assessed 14 years later, providing a unique opportunity to investigate if a pathway from behavioural and emotional problems leading to ecstasy use exists.

Individuals with signs of anxiety and depression in 1983 showed an increased risk of starting to use ecstasy.

Ecstasy’s effects are supposed to include enhanced feelings of bonding with other people, euphoria, or relaxation, say the authors. Individuals with signs of anxiety or depression may be particularly susceptible to these positive effects and may therefore use ecstasy to relieve their symptoms.

However, long term exposure to ecstasy may result in increased depressive symptoms. Individuals with signs of anxiety or depression in childhood are at risk of using ecstasy and may develop depressive symptoms. This may explain part of the link that has been found between ecstasy use and later depression in other studies, add the authors.

Other factors not tested in this study may account for the increased tendency to use ecstasy in some individuals. They include the social environment, novelty seeking, or substance use of parents.

“Focusing on these vulnerable individuals in future studies will increase our insight into the potential harmful effects of ecstasy on brain neurotransmitter systems and associated psychopathology,” they conclude.

From MedlinePlus:

From Elvis to Hendrix, from Janis Joplin to Kurt Cobain, rock and pop stars are more than twice as likely to die early compared with the general population, British researchers report.

What’s more, pop stars often die within a few years of achieving fame, often due to drug and alcohol abuse. But it’s their role as icons that worries the researchers behind the report that appears in the September issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

“People should understand the type of lifestyle that many of these performers live,” said study author Mark Bellis, director of the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University. “In addition, the music industry should consider not just the short-term health of popular rock stars, but also the longer term health even as they disappear later into obscurity.”

Part of the problem is living with the stress of fame, Bellis said. “Also, living in an environment of money and fame, which protects people from some of the consequences, which would make members of the general public give up drugs,” he said.

“Generally,” he added, “affluence enhances people’s lifestyles and prolongs life, whereas in this particular case the exposure to fame and what comes with it is associated with a mortality which is higher than that in the general population.”

For the study, Bellis and his colleagues collected data on 1,064 pop artists from North America and Europe who shot to fame between 1956 and 1999. These musicians were all featured in the All Time Top 1,000 albums, selected in 2000, covering rock, punk, rap, R&B, electronica and new age music.

Bellis’s team compared how long the stars survived after achieving fame to the life expectancy of the general population, matching for age, sex, ethnicity and nationality, up to the end of 2005.

The researchers found that between 1956 and 2005, 100 pop music stars had died. Their average age was 42 for North American stars and 35 for European stars. More than one in four died from long-term drug or alcohol problems, the researchers found.

But, for European stars who survived 25 years after achieving fame, their life expectancy returned to normal. North American pop stars, however, continued to suffer higher death rates. “The higher mortality in the rock business has elements about achieving fame, but also coping with obscurity,” Bellis said.

The lesson to be learned from the study, the researchers said, is that the music business needs to take substance abuse and risky behaviors more seriously. Not only because of the effect on the stars, but also because the stars serve as role models for others.

One in 10 children in the United Kingdom wants to be a pop star, the study authors said, and many take part in series such as the British show the “X Factor” and the U.S. hit “American Idol,” which reinforce the attractiveness of a singing career.

Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University School of Medicine’s Prevention Research Center, said the study findings should serve as a wake-up call for performers and their fans about the hazards that can accompany fame.

“Pop culture has a major influence on the lifestyle and behaviors of impressionable young people. Rock stars rank among the premier icons of pop culture, and thus de facto role models for their fans,” he said.

“While we have all witnessed the high-profile implosions of the rich and famous, there is little if any scientific data to confirm the intuition that fast living speeds up one’s demise, Katz said. “But that’s just what this study shows.”

“That is a sobering consideration, and one might hope not just for the musicians but their legions of fans,” Katz said. “But translating alarming statistics into policy and behavior change is the real challenge.”