Abstract In November 2018, the UK’s Home Office established a legal route for eligible patients to be prescribed cannabis-based products for medicinal use in humans (CBPMs) as unlicensed medicines. These include liquid cannabis extracts for oral administration (“oils”) and dried flowers for inhalation (“flos”). Smoking of CBPMs is expressly prohibited. To date, THC-predominant cannabis flowers remain the most prescribed CBPMs in project Twenty21 (T21), the first multi-center, prospective, observational UK cannabis patient registry. This observational, prospective data review analyzes patient-reported outcome measures (PROMS) collected by T21 associated with the inhalation of KHIRON 20/1, the most prescribed CBPM in the project. PROMS collected at baseline...

Please use this link to access publication Abstract Background: Anxiety is second most common reason for medicinal cannabis prescription in Australia and is being treated with both Delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-containing and cannabidiol (CBD)-dominant products. Objective: The aim of this article is to summarise recent advances in the understanding of medicinal cannabis in treating anxiety and recent trends in prescribing. Discussion: Clinical trials and laboratory studies provide evidence of anxiolytic effects of CBD in healthy volunteers and clinical populations, although current evidence is insufficient to support CBD as a first-line treatment. The evidence regarding the use of THC-dominant products for anxiety is ambiguous, with exacerbation of...

Abstract Objectives: We assessed whether administering cannabidiol (CBD) before recalling the traumatic event that triggered their disorder attenuates anxiety in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As an exploratory pilot analysis, we also investigated whether this effect depends on the nature of the event (sexual vs. nonsexual trauma). Methods: Thirty-three patients of both sexes with PTSD were recruited and randomized 1:1 into two groups. One group received oral CBD (300 mg), and the other received a placebo before listening to a digital audio playback of their previously recorded report of the trigger event. Subjective and physiological measurements were taken before and after recall. We...

Abstract Objective: To assess whether the effects of oral administration of 300 mg of Cannabidiol (CBD) for 28 days on mental health are maintained for a period after the medication discontinuation. Methods: This is a 3-month follow-up observational and clinical trial study. The data were obtained from two studies performed simultaneously by the same team in the same period and region with Brazilian frontline healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Scales to assess emotional symptoms were applied weekly, in the first month, and at weeks eight and 12. Results: The primary outcome was that, compared to the control group, a significant reduction in General Anxiety Disorder-7 Questionnaire (GAD-7) from...

Abstract Background Evidence suggests cannabidiol (CBD) has anxiolytic properties, indicating potential for novel treatment strategies. However, few clinical trials of CBD-based products have been conducted, and none thus far have examined the impact of these products on cognition. Methods For the open-label stage of clinical trial NCT02548559, autoregressive linear modeling assessed efficacy and tolerability of four-weeks of 1 mL t.i.d. treatment with a full-spectrum, high-CBD sublingual solution (9.97 mg/mL CBD, 0.23 mg/mL Δ−9-tetrahydrocannabinol) in 14 outpatients with moderate-to-severe anxiety, defined as ≥16 on the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) or ≥11 on the Overall Anxiety Severity and Impairment Scale (OASIS). Results Findings suggest significant improvement on primary outcomes...

Please use this link to access publication Abstract Objective A single administration of cannabidiol (CBD) can reduce anxiety during social anxiety inductions. No study, however, has evaluated the impact of CBD on fear responding among humans. Method A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial was undertaken to address this gap in the literature. Specifically, the current study tested a single oral administration of CBD (either 150 mg, 300 mg, or 600 mg), compared to placebo, for reducing fear reactivity to a well-established 5-min administration of 10% carbon dioxide (CO2)-enriched air biological challenge. CBD was administered 90 min prior to the challenge. Participants were 61 healthy young adults who self-reported fear...

Please use this link to access this publication. Abstract Women present increased susceptibility to anxiety- and stress-related disorders compared to men. A potentially promising pharmacological-based strategy to regulate abnormal aversive memories disrupts their reconsolidation stage after reactivation and destabilization. Male rodent findings indicate that cannabidiol (CBD), a relatively safe and effective treatment for several mental health conditions, can impair the reconsolidation of aversive memories. However, whether and how CBD influences it in females is still unknown. The present study addressed this question in contextually fear-conditioned female rats. We report that systemically administered CBD impaired their reconsolidation, reducing freezing expression for over a week. This action was restricted...

Abstract Rationale There is growing interest in the therapeutic potential of cannabidiol (CBD) across a range of psychiatric disorders. CBD has been found to reduce anxiety during experimentally induced stress in anxious individuals and healthy controls. However, the mechanisms underlying the putative anxiolytic effects of CBD are unknown. Objectives We sought to investigate the behavioural and neural effects of a single dose of CBD vs. placebo on a range of emotion-related measures to test cognitive-mechanistic models of its effects on anxiety. Methods We conducted a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover, acute oral challenge of 600 mg of CBD in 24 healthy participants on emotional processing, with...

Abstract Rationale: Cannabidiol (CBD), the major non-psychoactive constituent of cannabis, has therapeutic potential for the treatment of anxiety. Most preclinical studies investigate only acute effects of CBD and only in males, yet the drug is most likely to be used over a sustained period in clinical practice. Objectives: The objectives of this study were to investigate the anxiolytic-like effect of CBD in female rats compared to males and to determine whether the responsiveness of females was influenced by the stage of the estrous cycle. Methods: We carried out experiments to compare the effect of CBD in male and female rats in the elevated plus...

Abstract Preclinical research suggests that enhancing CB1 receptor agonism may improve fear extinction. In order to translate this knowledge into a clinical application we examined whether cannabidiol (CBD), a hydrolysis inhibitor of the endogenous CB1 receptor agonist anandamide (AEA), would enhance the effects of exposure therapy in treatment refractory patients with anxiety disorders. Patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia or social anxiety disorder were recruited for a double-blind parallel randomised controlled trial at three mental health care centres in the Netherlands. Eight therapist-assisted exposure in vivo sessions (weekly, outpatient) were augmented with 300 mg oral CBD (n = 39) or placebo (n = 41). The Fear Questionnaire (FQ) was assessed at baseline, mid- and post-treatment, and at 3 and 6 months follow-up. Primary analyses were on an intent-to-treat basis....