Berkeley Lovelace Jr. is a health and medical reporter for NBC News. He covers the Food and Drug Administration, with a special focus on Covid vaccines, prescription drug pricing and health care. He previously covered the biotech and pharmaceutical industry with CNBC.
The Food and Drug Administration declined to approve MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, drugmaker Lykos Therapeutics said Friday. Experts and advocates say the decision is a minor setback in the growing movement to use psychedelics in the treatment of certain mental health conditions. There had been intense political pressure on the FDA to approve the drug.
Talk therapy as well as antidepressants are the main treatments, but patients may not follow through with therapy, and less than a third report full remission of their symptoms from the medications, according to the FDA. David Olson, director of the U.C. Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics, said he doesn’t think the FDA decision will hinder the development of psychedelics for mental health disorders, including PTSD.
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