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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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Brain Receptors: Mammals hooked on cannabis components
Paul Simons BBC Wildlife
Thursday 01 Jul 1999 To most people, cannabis is an illegal drug, and cannabinoids are the chief ingredients which leave smokers stoned. Cannabis is also being used in medicines for relieving pain, nausea, epilepsy and glaucoma. Now it seems that life without cannabinoids could actually be lethal. Over the past several years, scientists have realised that all of us are cannabinoid users - and so are pigs, mice and every other mammal studied. Each has a supply of natural cannabinoids in the brain, which lock on to special brain receptors. But why? A team of neurobiologists led by Andrea Zimmer at the National Institute of Mental Health in Behesda, Maryland, genetically engineered mice without cannabinoid receptors in their brains so that they were immune to cannabinoids. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 96, pp5780-5). At first they seemed perfectly healthy, but before they reached six months old, a third of them mysteriously died. "They died very suddenly," explains Zimmer, "without any signs of sickness and without any obvious brain abnormalities." He believes that the cannabinoid receptors in mammals' brains not only play a crucial part in perceiving pain and controlling movement but also somehow protect the brain. Says Zimmer: "Without these natural cannabinoids and their receptors, we are more likely to suffer from some catastrophic, lethal central-nervous-system failure."
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