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Medicinal cannabis is routinely recommended for a wide variety of conditions. For example, in California, patients can qualify for cannabis medicine if they have AIDS, anorexia, arthritis, cachexia, cancer, chronic pain, glaucoma, migraines, muscle spasms, seizures, nausea, or other chronic symptoms. This begs the question – how can cannabis be recommended for so many different…

Compared with other recreational drugs — including alcohol — marijuana may be even safer than previously thought. And researchers may be systematically underestimating risks associated with alcohol use. Those are the top-line findings of recent research published in the journal Scientific Reports, a subsidiary of Nature. Researchers sought to quantify the risk of death associated with…

This originally appeared at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4311234/pdf/srep08126.pdf A comparative risk assessment of drugs including alcohol and tobacco using the margin of exposure (MOE)approach was conducted. The MOE is defined as ratio between toxicological threshold (benchmark dose)and estimated human intake. Median lethal dose values from animal experiments were used to derive thebenchmark dose. The human intake was calculated…

Barbara J. Weiland, Rachel E. Thayer, Brendan E. Depue, Amithrupa Sabbineni, Angela D. Bryan and Kent E. Hutchison Journal of Neuroscience 28 January 2015, 35 (4) 1505-1512; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2946-14.2015 Abstract Recent research has suggested that marijuana use is associated with volumetric and shape differences in subcortical structures, including the nucleus accumbens and amygdala, in a…

Abstract Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Several studies have demonstrated neuroprotective effects of cannabinoids. The objective of this study was to establish a relationship between the presence of a positive toxicology screen for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and mortality after TBI. A 3-year retrospective review of registry data at a Level…

ABSTRACT Chronic neuropathic pain is often refractory to standard pharmacological treatments. Although growing evidence supports the use of inhaled cannabis for neuropathic pain, the lack of standard inhaled dosing plays a major obstacle in cannabis becoming a “main stream” pharmacological treatment for neuropathic pain. The objective of this study was to explore the pharmacokinetics, safety,…

Abstract The hippocampal dentate gyrus in the adult mammalian brain contains neural stem/progenitor cells (NS/PCs) capable of generating new neurons, i.e., neurogenesis. Most drugs of abuse examined to date decrease adult hippocampal neurogenesis, but the effects of cannabis (marijuana or cannabinoids) on hippocampal neurogenesis remain unknown. This study aimed at investigating the potential regulatory capacity…

A 2012 Duke University study made international headlines when it purported to find a link between heavy marijuana use and IQ decline among teenagers. Other researchers questioned the findings almost immediately: Columbia University’s Carl Hart noted the very small sample of heavy users (38) in the study, leading him to question how generalizable the results…