Juan Antonio García-Carmona
Neurologist at Santa Lucía General Hospital in Cartagena, associate professor of Pharmacology at the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), researcher in neuropsychiatry at the Murcian Institute for Bio-Health Research (IMIB)
This is an interesting and methodologically sound preclinical study, as it does not merely observe that psilocybin reduces certain signs of neuropathy in mice, but combines behavioural tests, electrophysiology, molecular analysis and mitochondrial imaging, as well as experiments on human neurons and tissues. The results point quite consistently to a specific mechanism: the activation of 5-HT2A receptors appears to help maintain the transport of mitochondria to nerve endings during chemotherapy. Furthermore, the effect is observed with various chemotherapeutic agents and persists over several cycles.
Although the experiments with human tissue and neurons provide biological plausibility, they do not prove that psilocybin prevents neuropathy in cancer patients. In fact, the authors did not conduct a clinical trial, and their own results show that protection requires the treatment to be administered prior to exposure to chemotherapy; prior protection is not necessarily sufficient for a subsequent exposure without psilocybin. Therefore, the finding should be interpreted as a promising sign justifying clinical trials, rather than as evidence that psilocybin can already be used to prevent neuropathy in cancer patients.