Cannabidiol (CBD) as an Adjunctive Therapy in Schizophrenia

[Michael Komorn]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/cannabis-extract-marijuana-psychosis-treatment-mental-health-cbd-thc-cannabidiol-kcl-a8111386.html

 

Psychosis is a mental health diagnosis characterised by hallucinated voices or visions, or delusions where patients have strong and unfounded beliefs, for example feeling there is a conspiracy to harm them.

Antipsychotic drugs have been used in treating it for 60 years, but they have limited effectiveness and can have serious side-effects.

Professor Philip McGuire, from King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, was the lead author of the study.

He said conventional drugs acted by blocking biological receptors for mood-altering chemical dopamine.  

“However, dopamine is not the only neurotransmitter whose function is altered in psychosis, and in some patients dopamine function may be relatively normal,” he added.

“We need new classes of treatment that target different neurotransmitter systems.”

This trial found that patients given a CBD treatment saw statistically significant improvements in their psychosis symptoms relative to a group given a placebo.

The 83 patients, from the UK, Romania and Poland, also saw significant improvements in their health and severity of their illness as measured by their therapists.

There were signs of better cognitive performance as well, but this was not statistically significant.

While all the improvements were modest, the patients were still using their antipsychotic medication so it shows CBD treatments can offer additional benefits over and above conventional treatment.

The results are published in the American Journal of Psychiatry today. The paper says: “This is, to our knowledge, the first placebo-controlled trial of CBD in schizophrenia.

“The data indicate that six weeks of treatment adjunctive to antipsychotic medication was associated with significant effects both on positive psychotic symptoms and on the treating clinicians’ impressions of improvement and illness severity.”

Professor McGuire added that larger trials were now needed to confirm these findings in other patient groups.

“Although it is still unclear exactly how CBD works, it acts in a different way to antipsychotic medication, and thus could represent a new class of treatment.

“Moreover, CBD was not associated with significant side effects. This is also potentially important, as patients may be reluctant to take antipsychotic medication because of concerns about side effects.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29241357

Read the study here.

 

Professor McGuire was singing a different tune about this same study last year.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/862312

 

Lead investigator Philip McGuire, MD, PhD, Department of Psychosis Studies, Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience, Kings College London, United Kingdom, who presented the findings, acknowledged that the improvements with cannabidiol were not dramatic.

However, he told Medscape Medical News: "The way I would look at it is that it's quite hard to see an effect in people who are already being treated with something else.

Dr Philip McGuire

"I would guess that if you didn't have them on antipsychotics, the scope for an improvement would be even greater, because the baseline symptoms would be higher, so it should be easier to show a bigger change."

Noting the lengthy discussion of the data that followed his talk, Dr McGuire said: "Somebody in the audience pointed out that there was a previous trial which compared cannabidiol on its own with an antipsychotic and showed that cannabidiol had the same magnitude of effect as an antipsychotic. That shows that the [effect with] monotherapy is at least as big as an antipsychotic."

The patients were randomly assigned in a double-blind fashion to cannabidiol 1000 mg/day oral solution, 500 mg twice daily, or matched placebo for 6 weeks and were assessed on intention-to- treat analysis.

1 gram CBD per day.

http://alert.psychnews.org/2017/12/cannabidiol-may-be-effective-adjunct-to.html

CBD was well tolerated, and rates of adverse events were similar between the CBD and placebo groups.

 

Please always know where your CBD comes from. Have your CBD tested for purity and accurate dosage / strength.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2661569

There is growing consumer demand for cannabidiol (CBD), a constituent of the cannabis plant, due to its purported medicinal benefits for myriad health conditions. Viscous plant derived extracts, suspended in oil, alcohol (tincture), or vaporization liquid, represent most of the retail market for CBD. Discrepancies between federal and state cannabis laws have resulted in inadequate regulation and oversight, leading to inaccurate labeling of some products. To maximize sampling and ensure representativeness of available products, we examined the label accuracy of CBD products sold online, including identification of present but unlabeled cannabinoids.

Read the study here.

Quote

 

Results :

Eighty-four products were purchased and analyzed (from 31 companies).

With respect to CBD, 42.85% of products were under labeled, 26.19% were over labeled, and 30.95% were accurately labeled.

Concentration of unlabeled cannabinoids was generally low; however, THC was detected in 18 of the 84 samples tested, cannabidiolic acid in 13 of the 84 samples tested, and cannabigerol in 2 of the 84 samples tested.