Medical marijuana

[Alison Myrden]

Thought you all might be interested in this....

 

 

Love and a squish,

 

 

Alison

xx

 

 

 

Cosmos

 

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1442

 

 

 

Medical marijuana

 

 

Issue 10 of Cosmos, August 2006

by Elizabeth Finkel

 

 

"He reported success in treating rheumatism, and

noted that cannabis was a great anti-vomiting

agent."

 

 

Cannabis use has a 4,000-year medical history, dating back to the early Chinese and Indian civilisations.

 

In the early 1840s, William O'Shaughnessy, of the East India Trading Company, described experiments giving cannabis tinctures to patients suffering rheumatism, tetanus, rabies, infantile convulsions, cholera and delirium tremens – conditions that traditional Indian medical practitioners were already treating with cannabis.

 

He reported great success in treating rheumatism, and also noted that cannabis was a great anti-vomiting agent. Though his findings were enthusiastically received back in England, cannabis eventually disappeared from pharmacy shelves, probably because of the difficulty of getting a standardised preparation from imported plants.

 

Now the plant seems to be making a medical comeback, and for very much the same conditions O'Shaughnessy identified: alleviating pain, inflammation and muscle stiffness, and to relieve nausea. The rebirth probably began when recreational smokers reported that smoking helped with their ailments, particularly people suffering the pain and muscle spasms of multiple sclerosis, or the pain and nausea of cancer.

 

This article is a boxout that goes with our feature – Marijuana: What science has to say, read the full article here.

 

Like opium before it, cannabis uncovered one of the body's key regulatory systems for pain. Both opium and THC (the key ingredient of cannabis) act as keys that shut doorways to pain. Raphael Mechoulam and colleagues at the Hebrew University in Israel discovered the body produces its own cannabis – 'anandamide' – after the Sanskrit word ananda meaning "bringer of inner bliss". Just as drugs based on opiates have become crucial to pain therapy, so many doctors are eager to develop new drugs modelled on cannabis.

 

But doctors wanting to trial plant-derived cannabis face an uphill battle. Laurie Mather, a professor of Anaesthesia and Analgesia research at the University of Sydney, was invited to investigate the medicinal potential of cannabis for the NSW government in 2000. He became impressed by the plant's pain-relieving potential, particularly for neuropathic pain. Mather's information came from the scientific literature and from patients who found pain relief from the supplies they bought at the local pub. Concerned about what else the patients were getting in the pub supply, Mather wrote a grant proposal for a medical marijuana trial. It was never funded. Six years on, Mather has abandoned his efforts. "Without government support to get past the stigmatisation of this substance you just don't have a chance. I'm quite a cynic. I don't believe the issues are scientific."

 

A couple of companies produce laboratory equivalents of cannabis and go to great pains to distance themselves from recreationally used cannabis in their efforts to gain regulatory approval. Marinol, made by U.S.-based Unimed Pharmaceuticals is a laboratory-made version of THC that has been approved for use since 1986, albeit with severe restrictions. It is used as an appetite stimulant to mitigate AIDS wasting syndrome and to counteract nausea and vomiting in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. Britain's GW Pharmaceuticals produce Sativex, which is a pure extract from their own hot-house grown plant variety. It is used as a spray and effective at relieving the pain and muscle spasms of multiple sclerosis. Spokesperson Mark Rogerson says it does not produce a high, a result of the blend and concentration of cannabis compounds in the drug they use. (Cannabis contains a cocktail of some 60 compounds that resemble THC. THC is the most abundant and produces the psychoactive effect, while cannabidiol [CBD] dampens the high and relieves muscle spasms, nausea and inflammation. Sativex has a high ratio of CBD to THC). It is licensed for use in Canada, and there are applications for use in the U.K., Europe and the USA.

 

On the other hand, new drugs are being developed that do the opposite of THC. THC produces effects like hunger by acting like a key that unlocks a cannabinoid receptor in the brain. The French company Sanofi-Aventis developed a drug called rimonabant, which acts like a dud key for the lock. Just as cannabis is famous for giving people 'the munchies', rimonabant reduces appetite and has been successful in clinical trials of weight loss. In studies reported in 2005 in the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, dieters who didn't use it lost 2 to 3 kg in a year, while those who took rimonabant lost 8 to 9 kg.

[freddie]

Thanks for that Alison. I was looking for this article at the library the other day with no luck.

 

Anyone interested in a really good interview with Liz Finkel can download a real file here.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/adelaide/stories/s1722689.htm

[Harlsmanson]

Good stuff Alison