I didn't write this, Ray


Marijuana's Potential Exciting Researchers in Treatment of ALS, Parkinson's 
Disease
8/23/08|Canna Zine|

A Legal Mood Lifter: Researchers are investigating a new antidepressant and 
pain reliever that works like cannabis (marijuana), without the illegal side 
effects.

A decade ago, when Daniele Piomelli went to scientific conferences, he was 
often the only researcher studying cannabinoids, the class of chemicals that 
give marijuana users a high. His work often drew snickers and jokes, but no 
more.

At the annual Society for Neuroscience conference recently, scientists here 
delivered almost 200 papers on the subject.

Why the attention? Many scientists believe cannabis-like drugs might be able 
to treat a wide range of diseases, far beyond the nausea and chronic pain 
typically treated with medical cannabis. Researchers here presented 
tantalizing evidence that cannabinoid drugs can help treat amyotrophic 
lateral sclerosis, known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson's disease 
and obesity.

The Canna Zine is undertaking an information campaign which is designed to 
inform interested parties of the benefits associated with cannabis. These 
are not the normal "stoner folklore" myth's and legends as the US drug czar 
would have us believe, but are clinical trials and studies undertaken by 
some of the most respected medical researchers in the world, and a lot of 
them agree cannabis is a useful medicine. Join us on the Canna Zine cannabis 
forums and have your say.

Other researchers are studying whether the compounds can help victims of 
stroke and multiple sclerosis.

Although the chemicals work on the same area of the nervous system, the new 
drugs are much more refined and targeted than cannabis, with few of its side 
effects.

"Cannabinoids have a lot of pharmaceutical potential," said Piomelli, a 
neuroscientist at the University of California at Irvine.

"A lot of people are very excited"

Although the federal government opposes the use of medical marijuana, it 
generally doesn't restrict cannabinoid research, most of which doesn't 
involve the cannabis plant itself. Scientists who use Marinol, a legal but 
tightly regulated marijuana-like drug, do need government permission.

Because the cannabinoid system wasn't discovered until the late 1980s, 
decades after serotonin, dopamine and other neurotransmitters, researchers 
still know relatively little about how it works. Like all neurotransmitter 
networks, the cannabinoid system consists of a series of chemical pathways 
through the brain and nervous system.

Cannabis produces its effects by activating this pathway, primarily through 
the effects of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the drug's main active 
ingredient.

Over the past decade, researchers have been following these abundant trails 
to determine their real purpose.

"You don't have them there to get stoned. So, there must be internal 
reasons," said Andrea Giuffrida, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas 
Health Sciences Center in San Antonio.

Researchers have learned that endogenous cannabinoids, internal brain 
chemicals that activate the system, play a role in tissue protection, 
immunity and inflammation, among other functions. The cannabinoid system 
also appears to exert wide influence, modulating the release of dopamine, 
serotonin and other neurotransmitters.

Giuffrida and others believe cannabinoids can treat degenerative disorders 
such as Parkinson's disease and ALS.

At the conference, Giuffrida announced that a cannabinoid drug wards off 
Parkinson's-like effects in mice.

The disorder, which afflicts more than 1 million Americans, destroys neurons 
in a key part of the brain, causing patients to lose control over movement.

Giuffrida, with colleagues David Price and James Roberts, injected mice with 
a chemical called MPTP, which mimics Parkinson's damage.

When some of the animals subsequently received a drug that blocks 
cannabinoid receptors, their nerve cells suffered far less damage than did 
the cells of the other mice.

This was the first demonstration that a cannabinoid drug can have this 
effect. Although he is not sure how the anti-cannabinoid compound works, 
Giuffrida suspects it protects neurons by reducing inflammation, a key 
component in Parkinson's.

Cannabinoids might also slow down ALS, which destroys neurons that control 
muscles until victims become paralyzed, unable to breathe on their own.

Neuroscientist Mary Abood first became interested in cannabinoids after 
hearing about ALS patients who got some relief from smoking cannabis. So she 
began animal experiments at the California Pacific Medical Center in San 
Francisco.

In her study, mice with a variant of ALS were given a combination of THC and 
cannabidiol, another compound found in cannabis.

Both substances are cannabinoid agonists, chemicals that activate the 
cannabinoid system. Abood measured the course of the ailment by testing how 
long the mice could stand on a rod that was slowly rotating.

The treatment delayed disease progression by more than seven days and 
extended survival by six days.

In human terms, this would amount to about three years. That's a significant 
improvement over the only existing ALS drug, riluzole, which extends life by 
two months.

"I was very excited when I got my initial results," Abood said.

Also at the conference, researchers at the Institute of Neurology in London 
announced results that corroborated her findings. Cannabinoids have also 
helped some human ALS patients in one small trial, and Abood is trying to 
get funding for a larger one.

If cannabinoids can shield human neurons from harm, researchers say, they 
might prove useful against other neurological diseases, including mental 
illness.

Scientists are looking at whether cannabinoids can treat multiple sclerosis, 
epilepsy and Huntington's disease, while Giuffrida is beginning a study of 
their effect on schizophrenia.

Advocates of medical cannabis have long argued that the drug can be useful 
for treating many conditions, particularly chronic pain, nausea and glaucoma 
(in the latter, cannabis works by temporarily decreasing pressure around the 
eye).

Although they don't dispute this view, most researchers believe there are 
better, more precise ways to stimulate the cannabinoid system.

They believe cannabis has too many negatives to be a truly effective drug, 
with side effects that include memory problems, decreased immunity and 
possibly addiction. (Some researchers dispute this "addictive" claim.)

Cannabis has another drawback. From a scientific standpoint, Giuffrida says, 
it's "a very dirty drug." It contains more than 300 compounds, 60 of which 
affect the cannabinoid system. Scientists don't understand what most of 
these substances do or how they work together. This complexity makes it hard 
for researchers to pinpoint cannabis' effects.

One cannabinoid, Marinol, is available legally. The compound, which contains 
THC in a pill form, is usually prescribed for nausea and for appetite loss 
among AIDS patients. But Marinol has the same psychoactive effects as 
cannabis.

"So the key", Piomelli says, "is getting the effects without the side 
effects."

To that end, Piomelli has developed a compound called URB597, which doesn't 
flood the body with cannabinoids, as Marinol and cannabis do.

Instead, it slows the breakdown of the cannabinoids in the system. He thinks 
the drug may help treat pain, anxiety and even depression without making 
patients stoned and forgetful. He and others are testing it on animals.

SOURCE

Illinois NORML - Home

 _____________
Rayilyn Brown
Director AZNPF
Arizona Chapter National Parkinson Foundation
[log in to unmask] 

----------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn