Marijuana

Canada approves marijuana-based pain spray

Health Canada has approved Sativex® (Cannabis sativa L. extract) a new drug developed as adjunctive treatment for the symptomatic relief of neuropathic pain in adults with multiple sclerosis (MS). Canada becomes the first country in the world to approve Sativex, a novel prescription pharmaceutical product derived from components of the cannabis plant shown to have therapeutic properties. Sativex...

Scientists discover the body's marijuana-like compounds are crucial for stress-induced pain relief

new study shows, for the first time, that the release of the body's own marijuana-like compounds is crucial to stress-induced analgesia ?the body's way of initially shielding pain after a serious injury. The work, led by scientists at the University of Georgia and the University of California, Irvine, may yield a target for new drug therapies that will completely bypass the current argume...

Good news for the medical marijuana movement: pot proliferates brain cells and boosts mood

Most drugs of abuse decrease the generation of new neurons in the brain, but the effects of marijuana on this process, called neurogenesis, had not been clear. In a paper appearing online on October 13 in advance of print publication of the November issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Xia Zhang and colleagues from University of Saskatchewan show that a potent and synthetic cann...

Machinery of the 'marijuana munchies'

Marijuana--or more specifically its active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol--has a well-documented tendency to stimulate hunger. And while scientists have traced this property to cannabinoid receptors in the brain, they have had little understanding of the neural circuitry underlying this effect. Understanding this circuitry has important practical implications because blocking the cannabi...

Marijuana-like compounds suppress the immune response

A group of Japanese scientists has discovered that cannabinoids can cause some white blood cells to lose their ability to migrate to the sites of infection and inflammation. These findings, which appear in the May 5 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, could have potential use in the development of novel anti-inflammatory drugs. The cannabinoids are a group of chemicals that incl...

New DNA 'fingerprinting' technique separates hemp from marijuana

Using new DNA "fingerprinting" techniques, two University of Minnesota researchers have become the first to unequivocally separate hemp plants from marijuana plants with genetic markers. Hemp, a crop grown for durable fiber and nutritious seed, and marijuana, the most abundant illegal drug of abuse in the United States, both belong to the species Cannabis sativa. They differ in levels of...

Long-term marijuana smoking leads to respiratory complaints

Long-term exposure to marijuana smoke is linked to many of the same health problems as tobacco smoke, such as increased respiratory symptoms like cough, phlegm and wheeze, according to a new study by researchers at Yale School of Medicine. Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the United States, and abuse of the drug is on the rise. The study is published in today's Archives o...

Enhancing activity of marijuana-like chemicals in brain helps treat

Marijuana-like chemicals in the brain may point to a treatment for the debilitating condition of Parkinson's disease. In a study to be published in the Feb. 8 issue of Nature, researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine report that endocannabinoids, naturally occurring chemicals found in the brain that are similar to the active compounds in marijuana and hashish, helped trig...

New study examines 'brain's own marijuana'

A researcher at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) is investigating the “brain’s own marijuana?-- called endocannabinoid -- in the regulation of stress, stress-related behavior and anxiety. “It is widely accepted that one of the major reaso...