CLEVELAND -- Researchers have identified a protein that may play a role in the sometimes fatal hyperthermia due to overdoses of the drug Ecstasy. Experiments at Ohio Northern University show that mice bred without the protein UCP-3 heat up less when given Ecstasy doses that kill normal mice.

The studies are a first steps to finding a potential therapy to help humans who develop the irreversible complication after an Ecstasy overdose.

When the body overheats enough, skeletal muscle breaks down and organs fail, leading to an agonizing death, said Ted Mills, a U.S. Blood Institute researcher and co-author of the study, which appeared yesterday in the journal Nature.