alflud
Member
Hey everyone, I just though it would be a nice boost to read this fascinating article published at sciencenews.org by a person called Nathan Seppa.......It's full of opinion but also some juicy facts that I personally found totally enlightening. I hope you enjoy it folks 
To read the entire story click here.In science’s struggle to keep up with life on the streets, smoking cannabis for medical purposes stands as Exhibit A.
Medical use of cannabis has taken on momentum of its own, surging ahead of scientists’ ability to measure the drug’s benefits. The pace has been a little too quick for some, who see medicinal joints as a punch line, a ruse to free up access to a recreational drug.
But while the medical marijuana movement has been generating political news, some researchers have been quietly moving in new directions — testing cannabis and its derivatives against a host of diseases. The scientific literature now brims with potential uses for cannabis that extend beyond its well-known abilities to fend off nausea and block pain in people with cancer and AIDS. Cannabis derivatives may combat multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory conditions, the new research finds. Cannabis may even kill cancerous tumors.
Many in the scientific community are now keen to see if this potential will be fulfilled, but they haven’t always been. Pharmacologist Roger Pertwee of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland recalls attending scientific conferences 30 years ago, eager to present his latest findings on the therapeutic effects of cannabis. It was a hard sell.
“Our talks would be scheduled at the end of the day, and our posters would be stuck in the corner somewhere,” he says. “That’s all changed.”
Underlying biology
The long march to credibility for cannabis research has been built on molecular biology. Smoking or otherwise consuming marijuana — Latin name Cannabis sativa — has a medical history that dates back thousands of years. But the euphoria-inducing component of cannabis, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, wasn’t isolated until 1964, by biochemist Raphael Mechoulam, then of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and his colleagues. Within two decades, other researchers had developed synthetic THC to use in pill form.
The secrets of how THC worked in the body lay hidden until the late 1980s, when researchers working with rats found that the compound binds to a protein that pops up on the surface of nerve cells. Further tests showed that THC also hooks up with another protein found elsewhere in the body. These receptor proteins were dubbed CB1 and CB2.
A bigger revelation came in 1992: Mammals make their own compound that binds to, and switches on, the CB1 receptor. Scientists named the compound anandamide. Researchers soon found its counterpart that binds mainly to the CB2 receptor, calling that one 2AG, for 2-arachidonyl glycerol. The body routinely makes these compounds, called endocannabinoids, and sends them into action as needed.
“At that point, this became a very, very respectable field,” says Mechoulam, now at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who along with Pertwee and others reported the anandamide discovery in Science. “THC just mimics the effects of these compounds in our bodies,” Mechoulam says. Although the receptors are abundant, anandamide and 2AG are short-acting compounds, so their effects are fleeting.
In contrast, when a person consumes cannabis, a flood of THC molecules bind to thousands of CB1 and CB2 receptors, with longer-lasting effects. The binding triggers so many internal changes that, decades after the receptors’ discovery, scientists are still sorting out the effects. From a biological standpoint, smoking pot to get high is like starting up a semitruck just to listen to the radio. There’s a lot more going on.
Though smoked cannabis has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, its use for medical purposes has been sanctioned by law in 14 states. Different states apply their own restrictions.
Though the psychoactive effect of THC has slowed approval for cannabis-based drugs, the high might also have brought on a serendipitous discovery, says neurologist Ethan Russo, senior medical adviser for GW Pharmaceuticals, which is based in Porton Down, England. “How much longer would it have taken us to figure out the endocannabinoid system if cannabis didn’t happen to have these unusual effects on human physiology?”
Beyond the pain
Today smoked cannabis is a sanctioned self-treatment for verifiable medical conditions in 14 U.S. states, Canada, the Netherlands and Israel, among other places. It usually requires a doctor’s recommendation and some paperwork.
People smoke the drug to alleviate pain, sleep easier and deal with nausea, lack of appetite and mood disorders such as anxiety, stress and depression. Patients not wanting to smoke cannabis can seek out prescriptions for FDA-approved capsules containing cannabis compounds for treatment of some of these same problems.
Research now suggests that multiple sclerosis could join the growing list of cannabis-treated ailments. More than a dozen medical trials in the past decade have shown that treatments containing THC (and some that combine THC with another derivative called cannabidiol, or CBD) not only ease pain in MS patients but also alleviate other problems associated with the disease. MS results from damage to the fatty sheaths that insulate nerves in the brain and spinal cord.
“MS patients get burning pain in the legs and muscle stiffness and spasms that keep them awake at night,” says John Zajicek, a neurologist at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry in Plymouth, England. Patients can take potent steroids and other anti-inflammatory drugs, but the effects of these medications can be inconsistent.
Pertwee has analyzed 17 trials in which MS patients received some form of cannabis or its derivatives. Reports from the patients themselves, who didn’t know if they were getting real cannabinoids or a placebo in most of the trials, show improvements in muscle spasticity, sleep quality, shakiness, sense of well-being and mobility. Pertwee, who is also a consultant for GW Pharmaceuticals — which makes a cannabinoid drug that is delivered in spray form, called Sativex — reviewed the findings in Molecular Neurobiology in 2007.
Sativex was approved in Canada for MS in 2005 after studies (some included in Pertwee’s analysis) showed its success in relieving symptoms of the disease.
GW Pharmaceuticals expects clearance for MS treatment in the United Kingdom and Spain this year. Later, the company plans to seek U.S. approval of Sativex for cancer pain.
Zajicek’s team has also compared MS patients who received a placebo with patients receiving either a capsule containing THC or one with THC and CBD. Both of the cannabis-based drugs outperformed a placebo, and the researchers are now working on a multi*year MS trial.
Calming symptoms such as muscle spasticity and pain is useful, Zajicek says, but the true value of cannabinoids may exceed that. “To me, the really exciting stuff is whether these drugs have a much more fundamental role in changing the course of MS over the longer term,” he says. “We’ve got nothing that actually slows progression of the disease.”
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