First Pharmaceutical Treatment for PTSD Within Reach [View all]

[RainDog]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130514085016.htm

May 14, 2013 — In a first-of-its-kind effort to illuminate the biochemical impact of trauma, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have discovered a connection between the quantity of cannabinoid receptors in the human brain, known as CB1 receptors, and post-traumatic stress disorder, the chronic, disabling condition that can plague trauma victims with flashbacks, nightmares and emotional instability.

Their findings, which appear online today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, will also be presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry in San Francisco.

CB1 receptors are part of the endocannabinoid system, a diffuse network of chemicals and signaling pathways in the body that plays a role in memory formation, appetite, pain tolerance and mood. Animal studies have shown that psychoactive chemicals such as cannabis, along with certain neurotransmitters produced naturally in the body, can impair memory and reduce anxiety when they activate CB1 receptors in the brain. Lead author Alexander Neumeister, MD, director of the molecular imaging program in the Departments of Psychiatry and Radiology at NYU School of Medicine, and colleagues are the first to demonstrate through brain imaging that people with PTSD have markedly lower concentrations of at least one of these neurotransmitters -- an endocannabinoid known as anandamide -- than people without PTSD. Their study, which was supported by three grants from the National Institutes of Health, illuminates an important biological fingerprint of PTSD that could help improve the accuracy of PTSD diagnoses, and points the way to medications designed specifically to treat trauma.

"There's not a single pharmacological treatment out there that has been developed specifically for PTSD," says Dr. Neumeister. "That's a problem. There's a consensus among clinicians that existing pharmaceutical treatments such as antidepressant simple do not work. In fact, we know very well that people with PTSD who use marijuana -- a potent cannabinoid -- often experience more relief from their symptoms than they do from antidepressants and other psychiatric medications. Clearly, there's a very urgent need to develop novel evidence-based treatments for PTSD."

This research is hard to do. Not because the research itself is difficult, but because the National Institute on Drug Abuse controls who gets cannabis for research. They have consistently denied the FDA access in order to fund studies that may ameliorate one of the most debilitating forms of psychological trauma.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/why-its-so-hard-scientists-study-pot

Why It's So Hard For Scientists To Study Medical Marijuana

Both the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians have called for more research into the therapeutic uses of marijuana and for the U.S. government to reconsider its classification as a Schedule I substance.
The University of Mississippi grows and harvests cannabis for studies funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, yet because NIDA's congressionally mandated mission is to research the harmful effects of controlled substances and stop drug abuse, the institute isn't interested in helping establish marijuana as a medicine.

"If you’re going to run a trial to show this is going to have positive effects, they’re essentially not going to allow it," Lyle Craker, a professor and horticulturist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, says.

The federal government's position on marijuana, according to a January 2011 document featured prominently on the DEA's homepage, is that:

The clear weight of the currently available evidence supports [Schedule I] classification, including evidence that smoked marijuana has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medicinal value in treatment in the United States, and evidence that there is a general lack of accepted safety for its use even under medical supervision… Specifically, smoked marijuana has not withstood the rigors of science–it is not medicine, and it is not safe.

Burge tells a different story. "The United States government has gone to great lengths to prevent [medical] research on whole-plant marijuana," he says, though research into isolated components of the plant has gone on.