The psychedelic compound that makes magic mushrooms so trippy shows serious promise for protecting cancer patients from years of chronic pain.
For people undergoing cancer treatment, the nerve pain associated with blasting the body with chemotherapy can be debilitating. Even worse, the pain and discomfort can last for years—well after the body is done fighting cancer—and there’s no effective treatment to relieve it.
Known as peripheral neuropathy, the condition is caused by damage to nerves in the extremities, often the hands, feet, arms, and legs. Clinicians and researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have found that psilocybin administered to mice prior to dosing them with chemo completely blocks the painful condition from developing.
Mice in the study received two doses of psilocybin, the compound in mushrooms that causes hallucinations. They then underwent six rounds of chemotherapy lasting six months. Animals in a control group not given psilocybin went on to develop hypersensitivity to pain, a dulled sense of touch in their paws, and “withered” sensory nerve fibers in their skin.
Miraculously, the animals treated with psilocybin made it through chemo without any of the reduced paw sensation or shriveled nerves. The chemotherapy worked just as well to reduce the tumors for mice in the psilocybin test group.
The results are so compelling that human trials are set to begin this month. Researchers believe that psilocybin is able to protect nerves from damage by keeping energy-generating mitochondria moving along its normal pathways.
“There is an urgent need for treatments that prevent nerve injury without interfering with lifesaving chemotherapy,” the research group’s coleader, Dr. Moran Amit, said. The groundbreaking research was published this week in Nature.
Lingering long-term pain
Because chemo works systemically, affecting parts of the body well beyond the borders of a patient’s cancer cells, nerve damage can be a painful side effect of the treatment.
More than a third of cancer patients treated with chemotherapy develop peripheral neuropathy. As many as 60% of patients who receive platinum-based chemotherapy, common for shrinking tumors in the ovaries and lungs, experience the painful side effect.
People with peripheral neuropathy describe it as a burning, prickling, or pins-and-needles-like sensation. Such sensations arise when sensory neurons in the outer layers of the skin are damaged, interfering with the way mitochondria travels through them.
“Depleted of energy, the neurons’ tips degenerate, dulling tactile sensation and sparking chronic pain,” the MD Anderson study explains.
Psychedelic renaissance
The breakthrough research on neuropathy is just the latest point of excitement in the cutting edge field of psychedelics research. Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin, long dismissed as purely recreational and blackballed in the medical world, are in the throes of a research renaissance.
The magic in magic mushrooms has shown promise for treating depression, anxiety, and substance use disorder in recent years, with more research on the way.
In May, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced a new clinical trial to evaluate MDMA (commonly known as the party drug Ecstasy or Molly) as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans.
Beyond psychiatric conditions, the new study in Nature shows that psychedelics could unlock powerful treatments in the broader medical world.
“These findings offer important insights into how psilocybin may protect nerves before damage occurs, rather than treating symptoms after they become persistent,” Amit said. “At UT MD Anderson, we are actively exploring the multiple facets of psychedelics to pursue interventions that improve the lives of our patients.”