Baby rats given strong doses of the popular rave party drug ecstasy can suffer even worse life-long learning disabilities than rats given supposedly more dangerous drugs like methamphetamine, according to a study published by a researcher from Children's Hospital Medical Center.

        The findings, published in the May 1 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, imply that women who take the drug during the final three months of pregnancy may be placing their babies at risk of permanent learning problems.

        People generally take the drug in capsule form as a stimulant.

        “The damage we found was worse than previous studies of meth, and that was very surprising,” said study author Dr. Charles Vorhees. “Other than a commonly known risk of (overheating), the common belief is that ecstasy is a relatively benign drug.”

        The yearlong study gave newborn rats twice-a-day injections of ecstasy during a time when rat brains are known to be completing development of a part associated with memory and learning abilities. Even though the rat is already born, the period is equivalent to the third trimester of human pregnancy.

        Dr. Vorhees estimates that the doses given the rats were slightly higher than a typical dose a person might take.

        Then, as adults, the rats were put through two different types of maze studies to measure spatial and sequential learning. Rats given doses of meth had trouble with just one type of learning, but rats given ecstasy had trouble with both types.

        In humans, spatial learning is linked to fact-based learning, such as remembering the dates on a history test. Sequential learning involves recalling multiple steps of a complex task, such as following a recipe or remembering how to fix a car.

        “The damage was substantial,” Dr. Vorhees said. “In humans it would be hard to predict whether the person would be diagnosed with a learning disability or as a poor student that justs lags along near the bottom of the class.”

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