Chemotherapy is brutal. The cancer treatment is often lifesaving, but it comes with serious side effects. Some are shorter-lived, such as hair loss, nausea and fatigue, but others can last long after treatment is over and even for life. That’s the case with peripheral neuropathy. This painful side effect, which can cause tingling and numbness in the hands and feet, can be managed with ice and painkillers or opioids. But for the most part, it is unpreventable.
That could soon change: New research in mice suggests psilocybin, an active ingredient in magic mushrooms, may protect against this kind of severe nerve pain. The results, published on Thursday in the journal Science, show that mice that were given two doses of psilocybin were protected against nerve damage caused by chemotherapy for as many as six cycles of treatment.
“This is the first time where psilocybin has been used as a neuroprotective agent,” said Patrick Dougherty, one of the paper’s co-authors and a professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, at a press conference ahead of the paper’s release.
To read more, click here.