Category Archives: Endocannabinoid System
Therapeutic Use of Cannabis in Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
“The marijuana plant Cannabis sativa and its derivatives, cannabinoids, have grown increasingly popular as a potential therapy for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Studies have shown that modulation of the endocannabinoid system, which regulates various functions in the body and has been shown to play a key role in the pathogenesis of IBD, has a therapeutic effect in mouse colitis. The plant Cannabis sativa has been used in medicinal practice for thousands of years. Anecdotal reports have suggested a therapeutic role for cannabis in the treatment of IBD for hundreds of years. A case report from 1990 describes patients with IBD maintaining remission of disease via cannabis use. Cannabinoids appear to have a clear role in gut pathology and offer a potential target for drug intervention in the treatment of IBD. Cannabis seems to be of symptomatic benefit to patients often refractory to conventional medicines.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5193087/]]>
A user's guide to cannabinoid therapies in oncology.
“”Cannabinoid” is the collective term for a group of chemical compounds that either are derived from the Cannabis plant, are synthetic analogues, or occur endogenously.
Although cannabinoids interact mostly at the level of the currently recognized cannabinoid receptors, they might have cross reactivity, such as at opioid receptors.
Patients with malignant disease represent a cohort within health care that have some of the greatest unmet needs despite the availability of a plethora of guideline-driven disease-modulating treatments and pain and symptom management options.
Cannabinoid therapies are varied and versatile, and can be offered as pharmaceuticals (nabilone, dronabinol, and nabiximols), dried botanical material, and edible organic oils infused with cannabis extracts. Cannabinoid therapy regimens can be creative, involving combinations of all of the aforementioned modalities.
Patients with malignant disease, at all points of their disease trajectory, could be candidates for cannabinoid therapies whether as monotherapies or as adjuvants.
The most studied and established roles for cannabinoid therapies include pain, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and anorexia.
Moreover, given their breadth of activity, cannabinoids could be used to concurrently optimize the management of multiple symptoms, thereby reducing overall polypharmacy.
The use of cannabinoid therapies could be effective in improving quality of life and possibly modifying malignancy by virtue of direct effects and in improving compliance or adherence with disease-modulating treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28050136
“The 

