Background: Experimental evidence suggests the endogenous cannabinoid system may protect against colonic inflammation, leading to the possibility that activation of this system may have a therapeutic role in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Medicinal use of cannabis for chronic pain and other symptoms has been reported in a number of medical conditions. We aimed to evaluate cannabis use in patients with IBD. Methods: One hundred patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) and 191 patients with Crohn’s disease (CD) attending a tertiary-care outpatient clinic completed a questionnaire regarding current and previous cannabis use, socioeconomic factors, disease history and medication use, including complimentary alternative medicines. Quality of life...

Marijuana is one of the most abused drugs due to its psychotropic effects. Interestingly, it is also used for medicinal purposes. The main psychotropic component in marijuana, Δ 9 - tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), has also been shown to mediate potent anti-inflammatory properties. Whether the immunomodulatory activity of THC is mediated by epigenetic regulation has not been investigated previously. In this study, we employed ChIP-Seq technology to examine the in vivo effect of THC on global histone methylation in lymph node cells of mice immunized with a superantigen, staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB). We compared genome-wide histone H3K4, H3K27, H3K9, H3K36 trimethylation and H3K9 acetylation patterns in...

Opioid analgesic overdose mortality continues to rise in the United States, driven by increases in prescribing for chronic pain. Because chronic pain is a major indication for medical cannabis, laws that establish access to medical cannabis may change overdose mortality related to opioid analgesics in states that have enacted them. Medical cannabis laws are associated with significantly lower state-level opioid overdose mortality rates. Further investigation is required to determine how medical cannabis laws may interact with policies aimed at preventing opioid analgesic overdose.

An anonymous questionnaire sent to all patients attending the Prague Movement Disorder Centre revealed that 25% of 339 respondents had taken cannabis and 45.9% of these described some form of benefit.

Research into the pharmacology of individual cannabinoids that began in the 1940s, several decades after the presence of a cannabinoid was first detected in cannabis, is concisely reviewed. Also described is how this pharmacological research led to the discovery of cannabinoid CB1 and CB2 receptors and of endogenous ligands for these receptors, to the development of CB1- and CB2-selective agonists and antagonists and to the realization that the endogenous cannabinoid system has significant roles in both health and disease, and that drugs which mimic, augment or block the actions of endogenously released cannabinoids must have important therapeutic applications. Some goals for future research are...

Abstract Despite the major benefits of antiretroviral therapy on survival during HIV infection, there is an increasing need to manage symptoms and side effects during long-term drug therapy. Cannabis has been reported anecdotally as being beneficial for a number of common symptoms and complications in HIV infections, for example, poor appetite and neuropathy. This study aimed to investigate symptom management with cannabis. Following Ethics Committee approval, HIV-positive individuals attending a large clinic were recruited into an anonymous cross-sectional questionnaire study. Up to one-third (27%, 143/523) reported using cannabis for treating symptoms. Patients reported improved appetite (97%), muscle pain (94%), nausea (93%), anxiety (93%), nerve...

BACKGROUND: Cannabis is the most frequently used illicit drug among pregnant women, but data describing the effects of prenatal cannabis exposure and concurrent nicotine and cannabis exposures on neonatal growth are inconsistent. Testing of meconium, the first neonatal feces, offers objective evidence of prenatal cannabis exposure, but the relative ability of meconium testing and maternal self-report to identify affected neonates remains unclear. METHODS: Eighty-six pregnant women provided detailed self-reports of daily cannabis and tobacco consumption throughout pregnancy. Cannabinoids and tobacco biomarkers were identified in oral fluid samples collected each trimester and quantified in meconium at birth. RESULTS: Cannabis-using women were significantly more likely to...

Marijuana has been used for centuries, and interest in its medicinal properties has been increasing in recent years. Investigations into these medicinal properties has led to the development of cannabinoid pharmaceuticals such as dronabinol, nabilone, and nabiximols. Dronabinol is best studied in the treatment of nausea secondary to cancer chemotherapy and anorexia associated with weight loss in patients with acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for those indications. Nabilone has been best studied for the treatment of nausea secondary to cancer chemotherapy. There are also limited studies of these drugs for other conditions. Nabiximols is only...

Background: A high prevalence of cannabis use disorder has been reported in subjects suffering from schizophrenia, fueling intense debate about whether schizophrenia with pre-onset cannabis use disorder may be a distinct entity with specific features or whether cannabis use disorder can precipitate schizophrenia in genetically vulnerable subjects. Methods: We retrospectively assessed schizophrenia subjects with and without pre-onset cannabis use disorder on the basis of their clinical features, assessed categorically and dimensionally with the operational criteria checklist for psychotic illnesses (OCCPI). We also investigated whether the two groups could be differentiated on the basis of a history of psychiatric disorders in first-degree relatives. A principal...

Rich evidence has shown that cannabis products exert a broad gamut of effects on emotional regulation. The main psychoactive ingredient of hemp, Δ9 -tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and its synthetic cannabinoid analogs have been reported to either attenuate or exacerbate anxiety and fear-related behaviors in humans and experimental animals. The heterogeneity of cannabisinduced psychological outcomes reflects a complex network of molecular interactions between the key neurobiological substrates of anxiety and fear and the endogenous cannabinoid system, mainly consisting of the arachidonic acid derivatives anandamide and 2-arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG) and two receptors, respectively termed CB1 and CB2. The high degree of interindividual variability in the responses to cannabis...