In vivo detection of short- and long-term MDMA neurotoxicity?a positron emission tomography study in the living baboon brain
Synapse June 1, 1998 Ursula Scheffel, Zsolt Szabó, William B. Mathews et al. 146 citations
A single baboon treated with MDMA (5 mg/kg twice daily for four days) showed large decreases in serotonin transporter binding in all brain regions when scanned with PET and a serotonin-specific tracer 13 to 40 days later. Reductions ranged from 44% in the pons to 89% in the occipital cortex. Tracers for dopamine transporters showed no changes. At 9 and 13 months, some brain regions partly recovered serotonin transporter levels while others, such as the neocortex, remained persistently low. These findings demonstrate that PET can detect MDMA-induced damage to serotonin neurons in living primates and suggest the method could be used to test whether human MDMA users experience similar neurotoxicity.