“Marijuana use by adolescents and young adults with IBD is common and perceived as beneficial.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29673723 http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(18)30388-3/fulltext]]>
Dronabinol oral solution in the management of anorexia and weight loss in AIDS and cancer.
“The true incidence of anorexia secondary to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and cancer is not well classified owing to the fact that there is a lack of standardized definitions and recent clinical data in these settings.
Dronabinol, or Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, is a synthetic molecule that closely mimics the action of Cannabis sativa L., a naturally occurring compound activated in the central nervous system by cannabinoid receptors.
Dronabinol exerts its effects by directly acting on the vomiting and appetite control centers in the brain, which in turn increases appetite and prevents vomiting.
In the USA, dronabinol is currently available in two dosage formulations – oral capsule and oral solution. While the oral capsule was initially approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1985, the recent approval of the oral solution in 2016 presents an “easy-to-swallow” alternative for patients using or intending to use dronabinol.
Dronabinol is indicated in adult patients with HIV/AIDS for the treatment of anorexia and weight loss. However, there is no approved indication in the setting of cancer-related anorexia and weight loss. This review aims at presenting available data on the use of oral dronabinol in the management of anorexia and weight loss in HIV/AIDS and cancer, as well as characterizing and highlighting the pharmacotherapeutic considerations of the newest formulation of dronabinol.”
Cannabidiol inhibits endocannabinoid signaling in autaptic hippocampal neurons.
“Δ9-THC and cannabidiol (CBD) are two main cannabinoid constituents of marijuana and hashish. The pharmacology of Δ9-THC has been extensively studied, while our understanding of the pharmacology of CBD has remained limited, despite excitement in CBD’s potential role in treating certain pediatric epilepsies and its reputation for attenuating some Δ9-THC-induced effects.
It was established early on that CBD binds poorly to the orthosteric site of CB1 or CB2 cannabinoid receptors and its actions were commonly attributed to other non-cannabinoid receptor mechanisms. However, recent evidence suggests that CBD does indeed act at cannabinoid CB1 receptors as a negative allosteric modulator (NAM) of CB1 signaling. By altering the orthosteric signaling of a GPCR, allosteric modulators greatly increase the richness of GPCR pharmacology.
We have recently surveyed candidate CB1 NAMs in autaptic hippocampal neurons, a well-characterized neuronal model of endogenous cannabinoid signaling, and have now tested CBD in this model. We find that while CBD has no direct effect on excitatory transmission it does inhibit two forms of endogenous cannabinoid-mediated retrograde synaptic plasticity: depolarization-induced suppression of excitation (DSE) and metabotropic suppression of excitation (MSE), while not affecting signaling via GABA-B receptors.
These results are consistent with the recently described NAM activity of CBD and suggest interesting possible mechanisms for CBD’s therapeutic actions.”
“Symptom management in older adults, including pain and distressing non-pain symptoms, can be challenging. Medications can cause side effects that worsen quality of life or create other symptoms, and polypharmacy itself can be detrimental in older adults.
“In the last decades, the endocannabinoid system has attracted a great interest in medicine and cancer disease is probably one of its most promising therapeutic areas.
On the one hand, endocannabinoid system expression has been found altered in numerous types of tumours compared to healthy tissue, and this aberrant expression has been related to cancer prognosis and disease outcome, suggesting a role of this system in tumour growth and progression that depends on cancer type.
On the other hand, it has been reported that 
“The endocannabinoid (eCB) system plays a key role in many physiological and pathological conditions and its dysregulation has been described in several rheumatological and autoimmune diseases. Yet, its possible alteration in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) has never been investigated.
Here, we aimed filling this gap in plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with SLE and age- and sex- matched healthy subjects (HS).
In conclusion, our results demonstrate, for the first time, an alteration of eCB system in SLE patients. They represents the first step toward the understanding of the role of eCB system in SLE that likely suggest DAGL and 2-AG as potential biomarkers of SLE in easily accessible blood samples.
Our data provides proof-of-concept to the development of 