San Francisco college offers nation’s first degree in psychedelics
The California Institute of Integral Studies will offer the nation’s first bachelor’s degree in psychedelic studies.
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A mid-stage study of a pharmaceutical version of the psychedelic LSD reported the drug might help alleviate anxiety symptoms for up to three months, advancing a potential treatment for the most common mental health condition.
The study evaluated MM120, a pharmaceutical version of LSD, or lysergide D-tartrate, in 198 adults who had generalized anxiety disorder. After 12 weeks, anxiety symptoms improved in 65% of adults who took a single, 100-mg dose of the drug compared to 30.8% who took a placebo, according to the study published Sept. 4 in the medical journal JAMA.
The study reported a “remission” rate of 47.5% among adults 12 weeks after taking a single dose compared to 20% who took a placebo.
More than nine in 10 people on the 100-mg dose experienced hallucinations. Other common side effects included nausea and headaches.
MindMed, the company that makes MM120, has launched a trio of phase three clinical trials of the drug in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared the drug as a breakthrough therapy. The company has not said when it expected when it will seek FDA approval to market the medication as an anxiety treatment.
Researchers: New anxiety treatment needed
Dr. Jeffrey Strawn, a University of Cincinnati psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience professor, said the mid-stage study published Thursday, Sept. 4 is “really important.”
Anxiety, the most common mental health disorder, afflicts about 40 million U.S. adults every year but most never get treatment, according to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America.
Strawn said anxiety treatment options have “really not significantly changed in decades.” Doctors often prescribe daily medications like benzodiazepines or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac or Zoloft.
“This is a disorder where often we are frustrated as clinicians marching through multiple treatments that don’t work or produce side effects,” Strawn said. “Also, our patients are frustrated.”
Strawn, who oversees a clinical trial site for one of MM120’s phase three studies, said the drug is promising because patients can improve for weeks on a single dose.
Psychedelic research mushrooms
Research interest in recreational drugs or psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin, ketamine and MDMA has mushroomed in recent years. These drugs have been studies to treat a wide range of conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol, drug and tobacco addiction, depression, anxiety, migraine and other conditions.
Dr. John Fromson, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said LSD had been around for decades and decades. Some psychedelics studied as therapeutics also have been commonly used as recreational or spiritual drugs.
A challenge for medical research, Fromson said, is identifying the drug’s therapeutic effect because it has commonly been used for other purposes.
“One of the problems is they’ve all been conflated and mixed together,” said Fromson, also a psychiatrist at Mass General Brigham.
Fromson said the MM120 study appears to have identified a safe and effective dose. But he said the study must be replicated, and the medical community will need to figure out how to monitor patients after they receive a dose.
In the study, patients were monitored for at least 12 hours to check for safety and the effects of the drug. The monitors helped study participants needs such as food and restroom breaks, but the monitors were instructed not to provide any therapy to avoid influencing the study’s results.
In an accompanying editorial in JAMA, Dr. Claudio N. Soares, a psychiatrist in Canada, noted it would be challenging to pay trained professionals to monitor patients up to 12 hours in a real-world setting.