Drug use is found in the media, in schools, and even in the home. One cannot study a high school student body (or be a part of one) without at least hearing about the waterfall of drugs available to youth nowadays and how many of these youth are using. In high school, I remember the repeated advances of my peers to get me to use pharmaceutical and street drugs, and that is why I wanted to know more on the topic of how recreational drug use can lead to brain damage. I was intrigued when I heard of teenagers using a drug called Ketamine, a drug I’d never heard of before. Ketamine is an anesthetic that is now used as a hallucinogen.
Mice were used in this survey, and each were split up into three different groups, each group getting a different amount of Ketamine time ( the first received dosages for one month, the second for 3 months, the third for 6 months). In each group, 20 mice were given Ketamine while ten were given a saline solution equal to the amount of Ketamine in their group. Once the dosages were administered, the mice were put through 3 behavioral analyses (one measuring reaction to pain, another being a maze). Over time the mice would excrete the dosages of either Ketamine or saline. After the behavioral analyses, the rats were killed and samples were taken from each rat and placed in a machine called a TUNEL, where cell death and clusters of cell death could be measured.
What the researchers found was that, even though learning and memory were not affected, body weights and neuromuscular levels were lower for the Ketamine group after six months of usage. Also, in the Ketamine group the ventral tegmental area, important for rewarding eating behavior, was damaged.
Kyle, rats don't do surveys, this was an experiment. What are the implications?
ReplyDeleteDenise