Una D. McCann

McCann has written many research articles studying the effects of MDMA, including adverse reactions of MDMA and how it leads to serotonin neuron damage. She and her husband, fellow Johns Hopkins Professor and Physician George A. Ricaurte, have also linked abnormalities such as altered sleep, neuroendocrine function, altered behavior to 5-HT receptor drugs, and increased impulsiveness with MDMA users. In addition, she has also done research on neurotoxicity MDMA using functional magnetic resonance imaging comparing the neurocognitive capabilities of MDMA users and nonusers, as studies on animals using MDMA have shown negative effects. McCann and her husband Ricaurte have had one study published in the journal Science subject to retraction. In 2002, Ricaurte's primate study of MDMA usage and brain damage did not use ecstasy and that ten squirrel monkeys and baboons were injected with overdoses of methamphetamine, instead of MDMA, resulting in two animals dying and the withdrawal of four other academic papers. Ricaurte, McCann, and other scientist involved wrote a response to the retraction addressing the errors made in their research.

Prior to working at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, McCann was a psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and was Chief of the Unit on Anxiety at the National Institute of Mental Health at the NIH. Currently she is a practicing physician, professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, and holds many executive roles within Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. She is an editorial board member of the Journal of Women’s Health and Gender Based Medicine, Women in Medicine, Adicciones, Journal of Addiction, Journal of Sleep Disorders: Treatment and Care, WebmedCentral Plus, and Psychotherapy and Psychological Disorders and also holds a membership with the Society for Neuroscience, since 1988.

McCann graduated from Princeton University in 1980 with a Bachelors of Science while on a four year academic scholarship. After graduating, McCann went on to attended Duke University school of Medicine in 1984 and completed residency at Stanford University School of Medicine and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 1988. In 1985, she became board certified in California and in 1990 in Maryland.

Una D. McCann (born 1958) is a board certified psychiatrist and researcher at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry. She is also the Director of the Anxiety Disorders Program, and Co-Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Sleep Medicine and Research, and Associate Program Director at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. McCann is considered to be an expert in anxiety and stress disorders and her primary areas research revolves around amphetamine-induced monoamine neurotoxicity and neurobiology of anxiety disorders.