Specialists from Temple University School of Medicine have found more evidence supporting the use of marijuana-based treatments in Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and multiple sclerosis.
Inflammation could be a divisor within the progression of every of those disorders. But earlier comparisons suggest that marijuana can help control inflammation by acting on specific pathways present in immune cells.
In the latest study, Dr Yuri Persidsky of Temple University and his team investigated the role of these pathways, CB2 receptors, using human cell cultures. Published this month within the yank Journal of Pathology, they concluded that activating CB2 receptors could lessen brain tissue damage by preventing immune cells from crossing from the bloodstream into the brain.
These results show that selective CB2 activation in leukocytes decreases key steps in monocyte-BBB [blood-brain barrier] engagement, thus subduing inflammatory leukocyte responses and preventing neuroinflammation.
Shilpa Buch, PhD, a professor at the Nebraska Medical Center’s Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience, noted the importance of the new findings in an accompanying commentary.
None of the previous investigations has addressed the anti-inflammatory effects of CB2 activation in monocytes in such a comprehensive fashion.
According to Dr Buch, the migration of immune cells called monocytes plays a critical role in a wide variety of inflammatory diseases.
The development and maintenance of chronic inflammation seem to be underlying causes of various human diseases like induration of the arteries, obesity, diabetes, arthritis, chronic hepatitis, bone disorders, and neurodegeneration (including Alzheimer’s disease, degenerative disorder and chronic infections of the central systema nervosum like HIV-1). In all of those diseases, tissue infiltration by monocytes differentiating into macrophages plays a critical role.
Some investigations counsel that stimulating CB1 pathways – that area unit found largely within the brain and area unit accountable for the marijuana high – may additionally have medicament potential.
But as Dr Buch notes, treatments “devoid of the psychoactive effects of CB1 activation” are preferred by doctors.
And whereas a CB2-specific treatment has however to be tested in humans, she adds that previous studies have already shown promising results in animal models of atherosclerosis, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, liver and kidney injury and arthritis.
The study was revealed previous print and received funding from the National Institutes of Health and also the intramural analysis Program of the NIH-NIAAA
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Tags: Alzheimer's
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