Welcome to Senior Cannabis Digest. This week we look at a new study on cannabis use and cognitive health, addressing lower back pain with cannabis edibles, using CBD to treat diabetes in cats and more. Enjoy.
Cannabis News and Notes
There’s positive news for mature consumers and others who use cannabis on a regular basis. A new study funded by the American Medical Association found that cognitive attributes such as working memory, reward and inhibitory control were not significantly affected after a year of cannabis consumption.
That’s the word from Ben Adlin, reporting for Marijuana Moment. According to Adlin, a research team of individuals affiliated with Harvard Medical School, MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science recruited 57 newly certified medical marijuana patients from the greater Boston area.
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor brain activity during a variety of mental tasks. Participants’ brains were then scanned again after using medical cannabis for a year to look for changes in activity.
Wrote the researchers in an article describing the study, “In all groups and at both time points, functional imaging revealed canonical activations of the probed cognitive processes. No statistically significant difference in brain activation between the 2 time points (baseline and 1 year) in those with medical cannabis cards and no associations between changes in cannabis use frequency and brain activation after 1 year were found.”
Added the authors, “Our results suggest that adults who use cannabis, generally with light to moderate use patterns, for symptoms of pain, anxiety, depression, or poor sleep, experience few significant long-term neural associations in these areas of cognition.”
The study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and was published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
To learn more, we suggest reading Ben Adlin’s article in the September 20, 2024 issue of Marijuana Moment.net.
Treating Back Pain with Medical Cannabis
It is estimated that chronic pain (pain lasting longer than 12 weeks) impacts approximately 76 million Americans every year (Medicine AAoP). An issue for many in the management of chronic pain is a lack of consistent, effective treatments.
Increasingly, patients are turning to alternative pain therapies, such as cannabis. For example, there is anecdotal/self-reported data that indicates somewhere between 87 percent and 94 percent of medical cannabis patients are using cannabis—edibles in particular—for pain relief (Light et al., 2014; Ilgen et al., 2013). In addition, there is also evidence that suggests some individuals are using cannabis to supplement their traditional pain medications.
However, there has yet to be any significant formal research on the effectiveness of this practice. To address this gap in knowledge, a team of researchers affiliated with the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado Boulder and the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Colorado initiated a study that used what’s described as a naturalistic prospective design where 249 participants with chronic low back pain (140 of whom were women) who indicated they intended to initiate cannabis use for treatment were recruited. Participants then self-selected edible cannabis products containing varying amounts of delta- 9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). Products were categorized as CBD-dominant, THC-dominant, or combined THC and CBD (THC + CBD).
Participants were then tracked over 2 weeks of using cannabis edibles on an “as needed” basis and the effectiveness of the cannabis was then assessed in terms of changes in pain, mood, and subjective drug effects.
The researchers reported they found a significant correlation between THC dose and short-term pain relief, suggesting that higher THC doses were associated with greater pain reduction. In addition, THC was associated with higher levels of subjective cannabis drug effects, regardless of whether CBD was also in the edible product.
At the same time, an acute CBD dose was primarily associated with short-term tension relief; however, there were no associations between CBD dose and acute pain, although it was also reported that the more frequent use of CBD-dominant edible cannabis may be associated with greater reductions in perceived pain.
The research team contends these and other findings support the short-term analgesic effects of THC and anti-anxiety effects of CBD and further suggest that orally-administered THC and CBD should continue to be evaluated for the potential to provide both acute and extended relief from chronic low back pain.
The findings of the team were published in the September 23, 2024 issue of the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology. To read an abstract of their study, click on the following link.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pharmacology/articles/10.3389/fphar.2024.1464005/abstract
CBD and Pet Health
There is hopeful news for individuals who have a cat that has diabetes. According to researchers in Argentina, cannabinoids have shown promise when it comes to regulating glucose uptake.
In a paper that’s scheduled to be published in the journal Medical Cannabis and Cannabinoids, researchers describe a case study of an 18-year-old, neutered, mixed-breed female domestic longhair cat diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Upon diagnosis the cat began to receive treatments with long-acting insulin and its diet was changed to an ultra-processed commercial food created for diabetic cats.
Three months after initiating the insulin treatment, cannabidiol (CBD)-enriched extract that used olive oil as a medium was integrated into the treatment plan. The cannabidiol contained a THC to CBD ratio of 1 to 24 and was delivered by applying it to the feline’s mouth, specifically to the mouth lining and mucus glands.
The researchers reported in their journal article that after three months the amount of glucose in the cat’s blood was reduced, excessive thirst was reduced and sleep cycles returned to normal. They also reported that the cat remained attentive to all movements, and increased her physical activity.
The research team contends their report provides evidence that using a CBD-rich extract can be effective in alleviating clinical signs of diabetes and concurrent disorders in cats, allowing for the reduction of insulin intake when used as part of a comprehensive treatment plan.
To read an abstract of the study, simply click on the link that follows.
https://karger.com/mca/article/doi/10.1159/000541034/913300/Use-of-cannabidiol-dominant-extract-as-co-adjuvant
Treating ALS Symptoms with Cannabis
There may be hopeful news for individuals with ALS and those who love them. A new study indicates cannabis may be effective when used to treat symptoms associated with the condition—although there is also a reason for caution.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a rare, terminal neurodegenerative disorder that results in the progressive loss of both upper and lower motor neurons that normally control voluntary muscle contraction. ALS is the most common form of the motor neuron diseases.
Recently, researchers affiliated with the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio and the Department of Neurology, Long School of Medicine, which is also in San Antonio, conducted a study to evaluate whether medical cannabis can be effective in the treatment of target symptoms of ALS, such as pain, anxiety, poor appetite, spasticity and insomnia.
As part of a retrospective cohort study to assess medical marijuana’s impact on ALS symptoms and their progression, researchers reviewed the charts of all ALS patients treated at the clinic where the team members worked in order to collect data related to the primary outcome measures of symptoms.
The team found medical cannabis use correlated with alleviation of pain, poor appetite, and anxiety in the short term, but not with spasticity or insomnia—both of which are associated with ALS. There was no correlation between medical cannabis use and BMI (Body Mass Index) maintenance.
Unfortunately, medical cannabis use was also correlated with faster disease progression based on ALSFRS-R scores—a system used to measure the severity of a case of ALS.
In its article, the team suggested that going forward, a multi-center, randomized controlled trial to evaluate both the clinical efficacy and safety of medical cannabis in the treatment of ALS would be appropriate.
The work of the research team was published in the November 15, 2024 issue of the Journal of Neurological Sciences. To read an abstract of the study, click on the link below.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022510X24003794
Senior Cannabis Digest is compiled and edited by Joe Kohut and John Kohut. You can reach them at joe.kohut@gmail.com and at 347-528-8753.
