Maryland, USA
People take prescription stimulants for ADHD. This article reported results from experiments on monkeys to see if normal clinical doses of a prescription stimulant caused brain damage in NHPs after 4 weeks of use. The authors write about two baboon experiments and one experiment on wild caught squirrel monkeys.
Citation: Ricaurte, G. A., Mechan, A. O., Yuan, J., Hatzidimitriou, G., Xie, T., Mayne, A. H., and McCann, U. D. (2005). Amphetamine treatment similar to that used in the treatment of adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder damages dopaminergic nerve endings in the striatum of adult nonhuman primates. J Pharmacol Exp Ther 315:91-8.
Summary of Experiment:
These authors don’t report the number of monkeys clearly in their methods section. My best effort to understand how many animals were used from the captions to their figures are that there were 9 baboons and 9 squirrel monkeys…but the ambiguity means this is a minimum # of animals and there may have been more.
All animals were killed after about 4 weeks of drug administration. The brains of amphetamine-treated animals differed from controls. Based on the damage done to the brains of animals given the drug, the authors concluded that clinical doses of stimulants were neurotoxic and they called for more controlled studies.
Author affiliation: Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, 5501 Hopkins Bayview Circle, Rm. 5B.71E, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA.
Funding acknowledged: United States Public Health Service Grants DA13946, DA017964, and HD050202
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