“Meanwhile, a millennia-old remedy for epilepsy, cannabis, is staging a comeback with recent legal and social permissiveness accelerating research into this use.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29443283 http://cp.neurology.org/content/6/5/444]]>
Tag Archives: cannabis
Identification of a sustainable two-plant diet that effectively prevents age-related metabolic syndrome and extends lifespan in aged mice.
“The current system of food production is linked to both the increasing prevalence of chronic disease and the deterioration of the environment, and thereby calls for novel ways of producing nutritious foods in a sustainable manner.
In the “longevity village” of Bama, China, we have identified two plant foods, hemp seed and bitter vegetable (Sonchus oleraceus), that are commonly consumed by its residents and grow abundantly in unfarmed land without fertilizers or pesticides.
Here, we show that a diet composed of these two foods (the “HB diet”) provides a sufficient variety of nutrients and confers significant health benefits.
Aged mice allowed ad libitum access to the HB diet not only had longer life spans and improved cognitive function but were also protected against age-related metabolic syndrome, fatty liver, gut dysbiosis and chronic inflammation compared to aged mice fed a control Western diet.
Furthermore, longevity-related genes (including 5’adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase, sirtuin 1, nuclear respiratory factor 1 and forkhead box O3) were significantly up-regulated, while aging-related genes (including mammalian target of rapamycin and nuclear factor kappa B) were down-regulated.
These results demonstrate that the HB diet is capable of promoting health and longevity, and present a sustainable source of healthy foods that can help control the prevalence of chronic diseases and reduce agricultural impact on the environment.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29080417
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955286316303461?via%3Dihub
The Use of Cannabis and Cannabinoids in Treating Symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis: a Systematic Review of Reviews.
“Pharmaceutical cannabinoids such as nabiximols, nabilone and dronabinol, and plant-based cannabinoids have been investigated for their therapeutic potential in treating multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms.
This review of reviews aimed to synthesise findings from high quality systematic reviews that examined the safety and effectiveness of cannabinoids in multiple sclerosis. We examined the outcomes of disability and disability progression, pain, spasticity, bladder function, tremor/ataxia, quality of life and adverse effects.
We identified 11 eligible systematic reviews providing data from 32 studies, including 10 moderate to high quality RCTs. Five reviews concluded that there was sufficient evidence that cannabinoids may be effective for symptoms of pain and/or spasticity in MS. Few reviews reported conclusions for other symptoms. Recent high quality reviews find cannabinoids may have modest effects in MS for pain or spasticity. Future research should include studies with non-cannabinoid comparators; this is an important gap in the evidence.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29442178 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11910-018-0814-x]]>The Association of Unfavorable Traffic Events and Cannabis Usage: A Meta-Analysis
“In the last years were published many epidemiological articles aiming to link driving under the influence of cannabis (DUIC) with the risk of various unfavorable traffic events (UTEs), with sometimes contradictory results.
The primary objective of this study was to analyze whether there is a significant association between DUIC and UTEs.
Our analysis suggests that the overall effect size for DUIC on UTEs is not statistically significant, but there are significant differences obtained through subgroup analysis. This result might be caused by either methodological flaws (which are often encountered in articles on this topic), the indiscriminate employment of the term “cannabis use,” or an actual absence of an adverse effect. A positive test for cannabis (i.e., blood) does not necessarily imply that drivers were impaired, as THC/metabolites might be detected in blood a long time after impairment, especially in chronic cannabis users, which could also induce an important bias in the analysis of the results. When a driver is found, in traffic, with a positive reaction suggesting cannabis use, the result should be corroborated by either objective data regarding marijuana usage (like blood analyses, with clear cut-off values), or a clinical assessment of the impairment, before establishing his/her fitness to drive.” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2018.00099/full]]>Learning and Memory is Modulated by Cannabidiol When Administered During Trace Fear-Conditioning.
“Cannabidiol (CBD) is thought to have therapeutic potential for treating psychiatric conditions that affect cognitive aspects of learning and memory, including anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Studies have shown that CBD enhances extinction of fear memory when given after conditioning. This led us to hypothesize that CBD, if administered prior to fear conditioning, might modulate cognitive learning and memory processes in additional ways that would further guide its potential use for treating PTSD.
Therefore, we designed a study to investigate effects of CBD on fear learning and memory when administered to mice prior to administering a trace fear conditioning protocol which imposes cognitive demands on the learning and memory process.
Overall, the memory-modulating effects of a single pre-conditioning dose of CBD, which we show here, demonstrate the need to more fully characterize its basic effects on memory, suggest caution when using it clinically as an anxiolytic, and point to a need for more research into its potential as a therapeutic for treating memory-loss disorders.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29432803
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074742718300224
“Medically refractory epilepsy continues to be a challenge worldwide, and despite an increasing number of medical therapies, approximately 1 in 3 patients continues to have seizures.
Cannabidiol (CBD), one of many constituents of the 
“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