Medical Cannabis

CBD & Chemotherapy Induced Neuropathy

Taxol is a common chemotherapy agent that is a mitotic inhibitor. It is used to treat patients with lung, ovarian, breast, head & neck cancer and advanced forms of Kaposi’s sarcoma. One of the painful side effects of this agent is neuropathy, a side effect that can limit the effective use of the drug. This article shows promise in using CBD to help prevent the neuropathy caused by Taxol.  →

Harm Reduction

Neuropathic pain affects between 5% and 10% of the US population and can be refractory to treatment. Opioids may be recommended as a second-line pharmacotherapy but have risks including overdose and death. Cannabis has been shown to be effective for treating nerve pain without the risk of fatal poisoning. The author suggests that physicians who treat neuropathic pain with opioids should evaluate their patients for a trial of cannabis and prescribe it when appropriate prior to using opioids. This harm reduction strategy may reduce the morbidity and mortality rates associated with prescription pain medications.  →

Tumors Regressing — Thanks to Cannabis?

Two case reports in the journal Children’s Nervous System by Mansoor Foroughi and colleagues at BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver discuss the “possible role of Cannabis inhalation” in the spontaneous regression of brain tumors (pilocytic astrocytomas). The cases involve a girl who underwent surgery at age 11 and a girl who underwent surgery at 13. In each case a remnant of the tumor could not be removed.  →

San Francisco Medical Society on Cannabis and California Physicians

The four authors of this article served as San Francisco’s representatives on the CMA’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) tasked with drafting “a comprehensive white paper recommending policy on marijuana legalization and appropriate regulation and taxation.”  →

Cannabidiol (CBD) as an Anti-Arrhythmic – the Role of the CB1 Receptors

[From the British Society for Cardiovascular Research doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2011-301156.17 Y Hepburn, K Walsh,  L Wainwright. The Robert Gordon University, School of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, Aberdeen, UK; The Robert Gordon University, Institute forHealth and Welfare Research, Aberdeen, UK]

Cannabidiol (CBD) has been shown to be anti-arrhythmic (Walsh et al, 2010) and tissue sparing (Durst et al, 2007) in an in vivo rat model of coronary artery occlusion (CAO), although the receptors through which this occurs have yet to be identified.  →

The Endocannabinoid System and Memory Disorders

The most recent Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience reports on a study out of the University Medical Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Deficits in memory function are an incapacitating aspect of various psychiatric and neurological disorders. Animal studies have recently provided strong evidence for involvement of the endocannabinoid (eCB) system in memory function. The Abstract is posted here.  →

CMA Wants Cannabis Legalized & Regulated

The California Medical Association (CMA) has endorsed legalization and regulation of cannabis. At their annual meeting in Anaheim on Oct. 14, CMA delegates supported the conclusions of a position paper, “Cannabis and the Regulatory Void.” The Technical Advisory Committe found that “the public movement toward legalization of medical cannabis has inappropriately placed physicians in the role of gatekeeper for public access to this botanical.  →

SCC Hears McAllister On Cancer Research

Sean McAllister, Ph.D. SCC Meeting 12/11/10 Barriers between pro-Cannabis MDs and the medical establishment are falling. Doctors who monitor cannabis use by patients were bursting with questions yesterday during a talk by Sean McAllister, PhD, who has been studying the anti-cancer effects of cannabinoids in the laboratory (on a grant from NIH and with a license from the DEA). The occasion was the winter meeting of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians.  →

Project CBD

Project CBD Project CBD is a non-profit educational service dedicated to promoting and publicizing research into the medical utility of cannabidiol (CBD) and other components of the Cannabis plant. It was conceived by two journalists who have been covering the medical marijuana movement / industry in the pages of O’Shaughnessy’s.  →