MDMAWIKIMEDIA, USDOJThe US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the green light for Phase 3 clinical trials to test whether MDMA, an illegal drug also known as Ecstasy, can help treat post-traumatic stress disorder in a trial with at least 230 participants. This large-scale study comes on the heels of six promising Phase 2 trials of MDMA.
“I’m cautious but hopeful,” Charles Marmar, a psychiatrist at New York University’s Langone School of Medicine who was not involved in the study, told The New York Times. “If they can keep getting good results, it will be of great use. PTSD can be very hard to treat. Our best therapies right now don’t help 30 to 40 percent of people.”
Psychiatrists have been interested in exploiting the euphoric effects of MDMA in the clinic since the 1970s, but once Ecstasy was swept up in the Drug Enforcement Act’s crackdown on illegal substances, its Schedule 1 status prevented most research. In recent years, restrictions have loosened, and at least one promising study has shown that just three doses of MDMA administered by a psychiatrist ...
