Here’s a novel idea for countering the painful side effects of chemotherapy: beforehand, take the hallucinogenic drug found in magic mushrooms.
The study published Thursday in the journal Science involved tests on rats and certain human tissues as researchers looked at using psilocybin to fight a condition called peripheral neuropathy, which affects millions of people around the world. It was almost by accident that these researchers found that psilocybin can help cancer patients.
But a third of that group will develop non-stop, burning pain, said Dougherty, a pain treatment specialist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The drug has an “amplifier” effect and cancer patients who take it without supervision could feel more stressed and anxious than they already are because of their cancer diagnosis, said Gregory Jones, a psychiatrist who took part in the study released Thursday.
In rodents, taking two doses of psilocybin before chemo was enough to prevent the appearance of painful hypersensitivity during as many as six rounds of treatment. And it did this without affecting the animal’s immune system or hindering the cancer-fighting action. The MD Anderson Cancer Center plans to launch clinical tests with psilocybin on cancer patients later this year. Meanwhile it is important for cancer patients to avoid using magic mushrooms on their own as treatment, the researchers warned.
