As Parkinson’s cases continue to rise, the race is on for therapies to combat the effects of the disease — and researchers have pinpointed an unlikely source of relief.
Psilocybin, a psychedelic compound found in some mushrooms, has been found to improve mood, cognition and motor symptoms in Parkinson’s patients, according to a new study from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).
The substance, often referred to as “magic mushrooms,” has previously been shown to alleviate depression and anxiety, which prompted the researchers to explore its potential for Parkinson’s.
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People with the neurological movement disorder often suffer from “debilitating mood dysfunction” and don’t tend to respond well to traditional antidepressants, according to a UCSF press release.
“Many people don’t realize this, but mood symptoms in Parkinson’s are linked to a faster physical decline,” said lead study author Ellen Bradley, M.D., assistant professor and associate director of UCSF’s Translational Psychedelic Research Program, in the release.
“And they are actually a stronger predictor of patients’ quality of life with Parkinson’s than their motor symptoms.”
The small study included 12 people with mild to moderate Parkinson’s disease. They ranged in age from 40 to 75. All had depression and/or anxiety.
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They all received a 10 mg-dose of psilocybin, then a 25 mg-dose two weeks later. To measure the effects, the participants met with a licensed therapist before and after receiving the medication.
At the one-week and one-month follow-ups, the patients reported “clinically significant improvements” not only in mood and cognition, but also motor function.
“Many people don’t realize this, but mood symptoms in Parkinson’s are linked to a faster physical decline.”
“These results are really encouraging,” Bradley told Fox News Digital. “Depression and anxiety, which debilitate so many people with Parkinson’s, improved significantly — and those improvements lasted for at least three months after patients took the drug.”
Amir Inamdar, a pharmaceutical physician in the U.K. and chief medical officer at Cybin, noted that the improvement in motor symptoms was somewhat surprising.
“As the authors note, this could be because of the modulation of dopamine via psilocybin’s effect on several serotonin receptor types.” (Inamdar was not involved in the study.)
The most common side effects of psilocybin were anxiety, nausea, headache and elevated blood pressure, but none were serious enough to require medical care, according to the researchers.
“Despite the reports of challenging experiences in a couple of participants, psilocybin seemed to be well-tolerated,” Inamdar noted. “The side effects were consistent with what has been seen in other studies, with no precipitation/ exacerbation of psychotic symptoms.”
The study, which was published in Neuropsychopharmacology, a Nature publication, was funded by an anonymous donor.
Limitations and further research
This was the first study to measure the effects of a psychedelic substance on patients with a neurodegenerative disease, according to USCF.
While this study was an “important first step,” Bradley noted that the researchers can’t draw conclusions from it, as it was a small pilot without a control group.
“We’ve now started a much larger trial designed to rigorously test if psilocybin is effective in Parkison’s,” she told Fox News Digital.
“We’re also collecting multimodal biological data to understand how psilocybin works. That’s critical not just for optimizing psilocybin treatments, but also for guiding development of next-generation psychedelics that are in the pipeline now and could be promising for people with Parkinson’s.”
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Bradley still recommends that Parkinson’s patients approach psilocybin and other psychedelics with “a lot of caution.”
“I wouldn’t recommend to my patients with Parkinson’s that they start using psilocybin,” she clarified. “We’re very, very early in this research, and we don’t think these drugs will be safe for everyone with the illness.”
“I hope that people continue to advocate for research so we can speed this process of identifying the right psychedelic treatment for the right patient at the right time.”
Inamadar agreed that while the results are encouraging, the study was based on a small and limited sample.
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“The study was also open-label, which lends itself to higher expectancy effects, though the improvements in mood and anxiety symptoms were still seen at three months,” he added.
“Overall, [the] quite encouraging results warrant further investigation, certainly in trying to understand the mechanism behind improvement in motor symptoms.”
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