Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants

Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA(N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention.

The researchers,they surprisingly been found that cannabidiol and other cannabinoids can function as neuroprotectants. This discovery was made possible because of the inventor's recognition of a previously unanticipated antioxidant property of the cannabinoids in general (and cannabidiol in particular) that functions completely independently of antagonism at the 

NMDA, AMPA(α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole propionate), and 

kainate receptors. Hence the present invention includes methods of 

preventing or treating diseases caused by oxidative stress, such as 

neuronal hypoxia, by administering a prophylactic or therapeutically 

effective amount of a cannabinoid to a subject who has a disease caused 

by oxidative stress.

Also, the research includes an assay for selecting a cannabinoid to use in treating a neurological disease by determining whether the cannabinoid is an antioxidant. Once it has been determined that the cannabinoid is an antioxidant, an antioxidant effective amount of the cannabinoid is administered to treat the neurological disease, such as a vascular ischemic event in the central nervous system, for example the type caused by a neurovascular thromboembolism. Similarly, the method of the present invention includes determining whether a disease is caused by oxidative stress, and if the disease is caused by oxidative stress, administering the cannabinoid in a therapeutically effective antioxidant amount.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6630507