One of the most fashionable fields of medical science these days is phar-macogenomics. This is the study of how people with different genetic make-ups respond differently to particular drugs. The hope is that it will lead to high-precision prescription, with fewer side effects and better outcomes. But what is sauce for the medical goose, is sauce for the recreational gander. "Street" Pharmaceuticals, too, might be expected to have pharmacoge-nomic interactions. And so it turns out. In a study carried out on users of Ecstasy (MDMA as it is known to doctors, and "E" to its consumers), Jonathan Roiser and his colleagues at Cambridge University have shown that someone's risk of developing long-term depression as a result of taking Ecstasy depends critically on his genes. Their results are published this month in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
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