"SAFE & LEGAL ACCESS TO MEDICAL CANNABIS AND CANNABIDIOL (CBD)"

While not everyone with epilepsy should or would consider medical cannabis or cannabidiol (CBD) as a treatment option, some people living with uncontrolled seizures have reported beneficial effects and reduced seizure activity when using medical cannabis, especially strains rich in CBD. Further research is needed on the effects of medical cannabis on epilepsy, but when recommended by a treating physician, medical cannabis may be the best alternative for some individuals living with drug-resistant epilepsy and uncontrolled seizures.

Access to medical cannabis will support increased research efforts and allow individuals who have failed to gain seizure control an option for treatment.

"Alcohol, Not Cannabis, Associated with Violent Behaviors in Psychotic Patients"

The consumption of alcohol, but not cannabis, is associated with an increased likelihood of impulsiveness and violent behavior among subjects with schizophrenic spectrum disorders, according to data published in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology.

The link between substances of abuse, impulsivity, and violence in psychotic patients remains unclear but a team of Canadian and Italian investigators assessed the relationship between the use of alcohol and cannabis on psychotic, impulsive, and violent behavior in a cohort of subjects diagnosed with either schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders

The term "psychotic disorder" refers to a person's thought dysfunction and is often described as "the patient's loss of contact with reality."

This study aims at unraveling whether cannabis use disorder is associated with violent and/or psychotic behavior in patients who where hospitalized in a high-security hospital.

Endocannabinoid system: Essential and mysterious

Many of us have heard of some of the transmitter systems within our bodies, such as the nervous system, which gives us our fight-or-flight response. Fewer have heard of the more recently discovered endocannabinoid system which is amazing when you consider that the ECS is critical for almost every aspect of our moment-to-moment functioning. 

The ECS regulates and controls many of our most critical bodily functions such as learning and memory, emotional processing, sleep, temperature control, pain control, inflammatory and immune responses, and eating. The ECS is currently at the center of renewed international research and drug development.

What is the ECS?

The ECS comprises a vast network of chemical signals and cellular receptors that are densely packed throughout our brains and bodies. The "cannabinoid" receptors in the brain — the CB1 receptors — outnumber many of the other receptor types on the brain. They act like traffic cops to control the levels and activity of most of the other neurotransmitters. This is how they regulate things: by immediate feedback, turning up or down the activity of whichever system needs to be adjusted, whether that is hunger, temperature, or alertness.

A second type of cannabinoid receptor, the CB2 receptor, exists mostly in our immune tissues and is critical to helping control our immune functioning, and it plays a role in modulating intestinal inflammation, contraction, and pain in inflammatory bowel conditions. CB2 receptors are particularly exciting targets of drug development because they don’t cause the high associated with cannabis that stimulating the CB1 receptors does (which is often an unwanted side effect).

To stimulate these receptors, our bodies produce molecules called endocannabinoids (also called endogenous cannabinoids), which have a structural similarity to molecules in the cannabis plant, the anandamide (AEA) & the 2-arachidonoylglyerol (2-AG)

"Use of CBD in the Treatment of Epilepsy: Efficacy and Security in Clinical Trials"

CBD has received a great scientific interest thanks to its medical applications. 

In recent years, the scientific community has shown interest in this compound also due to its good safety profile and neuroprotective properties  in several neurodegenerative diseases.

CBD also generating interest due to its therapeutic properties such as antidepressant, antipsychotic, analgesic, and antitumor. 


In addition, it has been shown that CBD can significantly reduce two important forms of anxiety, namely obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

CBD shows anti-inflammatory properties in several experimental studies, modulating some pro-inflammatory cytokines and tumor necrosis factor as well as regulation of cell cycle and immune cells’ functions

Moreover, for a long time, the CBD has been investigated for its anticonvulsant effects. Several studies confirmed its efficacy in the treatment of epileptic seizures, especially in pediatric age. In 2016, the first results of  clinical trials showed beneficial effects of CBD in treatment-resistant seizure disorders, including Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS) and Dravet syndromes (DS).

The purpose of this paper wich published in  12 April 2019 from the 'Molecules Open Access Journals' is to evaluate the use of CBD, in addition to common anti-epileptic drugs, in the severe treatment-resistant epilepsy through an overview of recent literature and clinical trials aimed to study the effects of the CBD treatment in different forms of epilepsy. 

The results of scientific studies obtained so far the use of CBD in clinical applications could represent hope for patients who are resistant to all conventional anti-epileptic drugs.

Cannabis and endocannabinoid modulators: Therapeutic promises and challenges

The discovery that botanical cannabinoids such as THC exert some of their effect through binding specific cannabinoid receptor sites,has led to the discovery of the Endocannabinoid Signaling System, which in turn has spurred research into the mechanisms of action and addiction potential of cannabis.

This paper reviews current understanding of CB1, CB2, and other possible cannabinoid receptors, their arachidonic acid derived ligands (e.g. anandamide 2 arachidonoyl glycerol), and their possible physiological roles. CB1 is heavily represented in the central nervous system, but is found in other tissues as well CB2 tends to be localized to immune cells. Activation of the endocannabinoid system can result in enhanced or dampened activity in various neural circuits depending on their own state of activation.

This suggests that one function of the endocannabinoid system may be to maintain steady state. The therapeutic action of botanical cannabis or of synthetic molecules that are agonists, antagonists, or which may otherwise modify endocannabinoid metabolism and activity indicates they may have promise as neuroprotectants, and may be of value in the treatment of certain types of pain, epilepsy, spasticity, eating disorders, inflammation, and possibly blood pressure control.