Magic Mushroom Compound Prevented Nerve Damage From Chemotherapy in Rats

Peripheral neuropathy is a nerve condition that affects about three-fourths of people who undergo chemotherapy, causing numbness and tingling. About a third of those people go on to develop constant, burning pain that can make it hard to walk and can force doctors to cut back or stop chemo altogether. A new study published in the journal Science found that psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound in magic mushrooms, can prevent this damage in rats.

Researchers were originally studying how cancer hijacks nerve cells to grow, using psilocybin to study a brain-repair process called neuroplasticity. They were surprised to find that the compound instead prevented peripheral neuropathy from appearing. Chemotherapy destroys the tiny transport tracks that carry mitochondria, a cell's power source, out to the tips of hands and feet, killing nerve endings there. Psilocybin protected nerve cells and kept those mitochondria moving. In rats, two doses given before chemotherapy were enough to prevent painful hypersensitivity through as many as six rounds of treatment, without affecting the immune system or blunting chemo's cancer-fighting effect.

“This is a highly promising finding,” said Kristy Townsend, a professor of neurobiology at Ohio State University who was not involved in the study. She noted that the nerve-protecting effect did not appear to depend on psilocybin's hallucinogenic properties, since a non-hallucinogenic version of the compound had the same effect in a lab test. MD Anderson Cancer Center plans to begin clinical tests of psilocybin in cancer patients later this year, but testing is still needed to confirm the treatment is safe and effective in people.

Patrick Dougherty, a co-author of the study and pain specialist at MD Anderson, and psychiatrist Gregory Jones, who also took part in the study, warned cancer patients against using magic mushrooms on their own before that testing is complete. Psilocybin has an “amplifier” effect, Jones said, and unsupervised use could leave someone more stressed or anxious than before.