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Cannabis Spin-Off Eases Nerve Pain in Rats
Will Boggs, MD Reuters
Monday 11 Aug 2003 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A cannabis-like drug currently undergoing lab tests may hold out relief for people with painful nerve damage in their arms or legs, without causing the "high" that comes with smoking pot. The effects of cannabis and related compounds come from the interaction of the drug with so-called receptors, which are of different types within the brain and central nervous system as opposed to outside the brain in other areas of the body. The CB1 receptors in the brain cause the mental effects of the drug, while the "peripheral" CB2 receptors are responsible for the benefits that some patients with glaucoma or cancer, for example, get from cannabis. Now scientists have developed a drug that acts mainly on the CB2 receptors. "By targeting a specific class of cannabinoid receptors, we have developed selective cannabinoid drugs (drugs with actions similar to those of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana) that should lack the undesirable central nervous system side effects (such as sedation and anxiety) and the abuse potential of non-selective cannabinoid drugs," Dr. T. Philip Malan Jr. told Reuters Health. Malan, from the University of Arizona in Tucson, and associates tested the drug, known as AM1241, in lab rats that develop an exaggerated sensitivity to heat and touch, mimicking neuropathic pain. They found that increasing doses of the drug increasingly blocked the animals' responses to touch and heat. These beneficial effects of AM1241 were completely reversed when the animals were given a drug that blocked CB2 receptors, but not one that blocked CB1 receptors, the researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Drugs like AM1241 that activate CB2 receptors have been shown to reduce various types of pain, Malan explained. "We have emphasized their actions in neuropathic pain because there is a strong need for new therapies for neuropathic pain." Despite the promise, he did sound a note of caution. CB2 receptors are found on immune cells, "and drugs acting on CB2 receptors can inhibit immune cell function." He doesn't think this will cause harmful immune suppression, because other drugs with similar effects do not, but it still needs to be looked at. SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, August 11, 2003, online Early Edition.
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