
“Muscle wasting, anorexia, and metabolic dysregulation are common side-effects of cytotoxic chemotherapy, having a dose-limiting effect on treatment efficacy, and compromising quality of life and mortality.
Extracts of Cannabis sativa, and analogues of the major phytocannabinoid Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol, have been used to ameliorate chemotherapy-induced appetite loss and nausea for decades. However, psychoactive side-effects limit their clinical utility, and they have little efficacy against weight loss.
We recently established that the non-psychoactive phytocannabinoid (CBG) stimulates appetite in healthy rats, without neuromotor side-effects. The present study assessed whether CBG attenuates anorexia and/or other cachectic effects induced by the broad-spectrum chemotherapy agent cisplatin.
RESULTS:
CBG (120 mg/kg) modestly increased food intake, predominantly at 36-60hrs (p<0.05), and robustly attenuated cisplatin-induced weight loss from 6.3% to 2.6% at 72hrs (p<0.01). Cisplatin-induced skeletal muscle atrophy was associated with elevated plasma corticosterone (3.7 vs 13.1ng/ml, p<0.01), observed selectively in MHC type IIx (p<0.05) and IIb (p<0.0005) fibres, and was reversed by pharmacological rescue of dysregulated Akt/S6-mediated protein synthesis and autophagy processes. Plasma metabonomic analysis revealed cisplatin administration produced a wide-ranging aberrant metabolic phenotype (Q2Ŷ=0.5380, p=0.001), involving alterations to glucose, amino acid, choline and lipid metabolism, citrate cycle, gut microbiome function, and nephrotoxicity, which were partially normalized by CBG treatment (Q2Ŷ=0.2345, p=0.01). Lipidomic analysis of hypothalami and plasma revealed extensive cisplatin-induced dysregulation of central and peripheral lipoamines (29/79 and 11/26 screened, respectively), including reversible elevations in systemic N-acyl glycine concentrations which were negatively associated with the anti-cachectic effects of CBG treatment.
CONCLUSIONS:
Endocannabinoid-like lipoamines may have hitherto unrecognized roles in the metabolic side-effects associated with chemotherapy, with the N-acyl glycine subfamily in particular identified as a potential therapeutic target and/or biomarker of anabolic interventions. CBG-based treatments may represent a novel therapeutic option for chemotherapy-induced cachexia, warranting investigation in tumour-bearing cachexia models.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31035309
“Inflammation and oxidative stress play main roles in neurodegeneration.
“Aldose reductase (ALR2) is a key enzyme involved in diabetic complications and the search for new aldose reductase inhibitors (ARIs) is currently very important.
The synthetic ARIs are often associated with deleterious side effects and medicinal and edible plants, containing compounds with aldose reductase inhibitory activity, could be useful for prevention and therapy of diabetic complications.
Non-psychotropic phytocannabinoids exert multiple pharmacological effects with therapeutic potential in many diseases such as inflammation, cancer, diabetes.
Here, we have investigated the inhibitory effects of extracts and their fractions from two Cannabis sativa L. chemotypes with high content of cannabidiol (CBD)/cannabidiolic acid (CBDA) and cannabigerol (CBG)/cannabigerolic acid (CBGA), respectively, on human recombinant and pig kidney aldose reductase activity in vitro.
A molecular docking study was performed to evaluate the interaction of these
“A liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry single-laboratory validation was performed for the detection and quantification of the 10 major
“Research in the last decades has widely investigated the anti-oxidant properties of natural products as a therapeutic approach for the prevention and the treatment of oxidative-stress related disorders.
In this context, several studies were aimed to evaluate the therapeutic potential of phytocannabinoids, the bioactive compounds of Cannabis sativa.
Here, we examined the anti-oxidant ability of Cannabigerol (CBG), a non-psychotropic