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Pot for bone fractures?

A compound in marijuana may be helpful in healing bone fractures.

Cannabis -- marijuana, hashish -- was used as a go-to medical remedy by societies around the world for centuries. But the therapeutic use of marijuana was banned in most countries in the 1930s and '40s due to a growing awareness of the dangers of addiction. The significant medical benefits of marijuana in alleviating symptoms of such diseases as Parkinson's, cancer, and multiple sclerosis have only recently been reinvestigated.

A new study published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research by Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University researchers explores another promising new medical application for marijuana. According to the research, the administration of the non-psychotropic component cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) significantly helps heal bone fractures. The study, conducted on rats with mid-femoral fractures, found that CBD -- even when isolated from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the major psychoactive component of cannabis -- markedly enhanced the healing process of the femora after just eight weeks.

The research was led jointly by Dr. Yankel Gabet of the Bone Research Laboratory at the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology at TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the late Prof. Itai Bab of Hebrew University's Bone Laboratory.

Undeniable clinical potential

The same team, in earlier research, discovered that cannabinoid receptors within our bodies stimulated bone formation and inhibited bone loss. This paves the way for the future use of cannabinoid drugs to combat osteoporosis and other bone-related diseases.

"The clinical potential of cannabinoid-related compounds is simply undeniable at this point," said Dr. Gabet. "While there is still a lot of work to be done to develop appropriate therapies, it is clear that it is possible to detach a clinical therapy objective from the psychoactivity of cannabis. CBD, the principal agent in our study, is primarily anti-inflammatory and has no psychoactivity."

According to Dr. Gabet, our bodies are equipped with a cannabinoid system, which regulates both vital and non-vital systems. "We only respond to cannabis because we are built with intrinsic compounds and receptors that can also be activated by compounds in the cannabis plant," he said. The researchers found that the skeleton itself is regulated by cannabinoids. Even the addition of a non-psychogenic compound acting outside of the brain can affect the skeleton.

Separating the components out

"We found that CBD alone makes bones stronger during healing, enhancing the maturation of the collagenous matrix, which provides the basis for new mineralization of bone tissue," said Dr. Gabet. "After being treated with CBD, the healed bone will be harder to break in the future."

The researchers injected one group of rats with CBD alone and another with a combination of CBD and THC. After evaluating the administration of THC and CBD together in the rats, they found CBD alone provided the necessary therapeutic stimulus.

"We found CBD alone to be sufficiently effective in enhancing fracture healing," said Dr. Gabet. "Other studies have also shown CBD to be a safe agent, which leads us to believe we should continue this line of study in clinical trials to assess its usefulness in improving human fracture healing."

Check the ingredients in this cough syrup

Marijuana seems to shrink cancer tumors

Interesting. Marijuana seems to shrink cancer tumors.

The new research by specialists at St George's, University of London, studied the treatment of brain cancer tumours in the laboratory and discovered that the most effective treatment was to combine active chemical components of the cannabis plant which are called cannabinoids.

Two of these called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) were tested as part of the research into brain cancer which is particularly difficult to treat and claims the lives of about 5,200 each year. It also has a particularly poor prognosis as the rate of survival after five years of patients' diagnosis is around 10%.

Cannabinoids are the active chemicals in cannabis and are also known more specifically as phytocannabinoids. There are 85 known cannabinoids in the cannabis plant.

The new research is the first to show a drastic effect when combining THC and CBD with irradiation. Tumours growing in the brains of mice were drastically slowed down when THC/CBD was used with irradiation.

Dr Wai Liu, Senior Research Fellow and lead researcher on the project, said: "The results are extremely exciting. The tumours were treated in a variety of ways, either with no treatment, the cannabinoids alone, and irradiation alone or with both the cannabinoids and irradiation at the same time.

"Those treated with both irradiation and the cannabinoids saw the most beneficial results and a drastic reduction in size. In some cases, the tumours effectively disappeared in the animals. This augurs well for further research in humans in the future. At the moment this is a mostly fatal disease.

"The benefits of the cannabis plant elements were known before but the drastic reduction of brain cancers if used with irradiation is something new and may well prove promising for patients who are in gravely serious situations with such cancers in the future."

The research team are discussing the possibility of combining cannabinoids with irradiation in a human clinical trial.

The research has been published in the Molecular Cancer Therapeutics journal.

Cannabinoids are the active chemicals in cannabis and are also known more specifically as phytocannabinoids. There are 85 known cannabinoids in the cannabis plant. The primary psychoactive component of cannabis is called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

James Garner

Where you least expect it

You never know where you'll find the next medicine. For example, scientists have found that a hundred year-old medicine for sleeping sickness shows some promise for treating symptoms of autism. It is not a cure, but it may point towards a similar drug that will. 

Naviaux said the findings fit neatly with the idea that autism is caused by a multitude of interconnected factors: "Twenty percent of the known factors associated with autism are genetic, but most are not. It's wrong to think of genes and the environment as separate and independent factors. Genes and environmental factors interact. The net result of this interaction is metabolism."

Naviaux, who is co-director of the Mitochondrial and Metabolic Disease Center at UC San Diego, said one of the universal symptoms of autism is metabolic disturbances. "Cells have a halo of metabolites (small molecules involved in metabolism, the set of chemical processes that maintain life) and nucleotides surrounding them. These create a sort of chemical glow that broadcasts the state of health of the cell."

Cells threatened or damaged by microbes, such as viruses or bacteria, or by physical forces or by chemicals, such as pollutants, react defensively, a part of the normal immune response, Naviaux said. Their membranes stiffen. Internal metabolic processes are altered, most notably mitochondria -- the cells' critical "power plants." And communications between cells are dramatically reduced. This is the "cell danger response," said Naviaux, and if it persists, the result can be lasting, diverse impairment. If it occurs during childhood, for example, neurodevelopment is delayed.

"Cells behave like countries at war," said Naviaux. "When a threat begins, they harden their borders. They don't trust their neighbors. But without constant communication with the outside, cells begin to function differently. In the case of neurons, it might be by making fewer or too many connections. One way to look at this related to autism is this: When cells stop talking to each other, children stop talking."

Naviaux and colleagues have focused on a cellular signaling system linked to both mitochondrial function and to the cell's innate immune function. Specifically, they have zeroed in on the role of nucleotides like adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and other signaling mitokines -- molecules generated by distressed mitochondria. These mitokines have separate metabolic functions outside of the cell where they bind to and regulate receptors present on every cell of the body. Nineteen types of so-called purinergic receptors are known to be stimulated by these extracellular nucleotides, and the receptors are known to control a broad range of biological characteristics with relevance to autism, such as impaired language and social skills.

In their latest work, Naviaux again tested the effect of suramin, a well-known inhibitor of purinergic signaling that was first synthesized in 1916 and is used to treat trypanosomiasis or African sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease. They found that suramin blocked the extracellular signaling pathway used by ATP and other mitokines in a mouse model of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), ending the cell danger response and related inflammation. Cells subsequently began behaving normally and autism-like behaviors and metabolism in the mice were corrected.

However, the biological and behavioral benefits of suramin were not permanent, nor preventive. A single dose remained effective in the mice for about five weeks, and then washed out. Moreover, suramin cannot be taken long-term since it can result in anemia and adrenal gland dysfunction.

Still, Naviaux said these and earlier findings are sufficiently encouraging to soon launch a small phase 1 clinical trial with children who have ASD. He expects the trial to begin later this year.

"Obviously correcting abnormalities in a mouse is a long way from a cure in humans, but we think this approach -- antipurinergic therapy -- is a new and fresh way to think about and address the challenge of autism.

"Our work doesn't contradict what others have discovered or done. It's another perspective. Our idea is that this kind of treatment -- eliminating a basic, underlying metabolic dysfunction -- removes a hurdle that might make other non-drug behavioral and developmental therapies of autism more effective. The discovery that a single dose of medicine can fundamentally reset metabolism for weeks means that newer and safer drugs might not need to be given chronically. Members of this new class of medicines might need to be given only intermittently during sensitive developmental windows to unblock metabolism and permit improved development in response to many kinds of behavioral and occupational therapies, and to natural play."

 

Medical marijuana myths

There have been a lot of myths about medical marijuana. This will help straighten out a few of them.

Is Parkinson's an auto-immune disease?

A new theory suggests that Parkinson's Disease is an auto-immune disease, like multiple sclerosis, but that the body's immune system attacks neurons.

"This is a new, and likely controversial, idea in Parkinson's disease; but if true, it could lead to new ways to prevent neuronal death in Parkinson's that resemble treatments for autoimmune diseases," said the study's senior author, David Sulzer, PhD, professor of neurobiology in the departments of psychiatry, neurology, and pharmacology at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons.

The new hypothesis about Parkinson's emerges from other findings in the study that overturn a deep-seated assumption about neurons and the immune system.

For decades, neurobiologists have thought that neurons are protected from attacks from the immune system, in part, because they do not display antigens on their cell surfaces. Most cells, if infected by virus or bacteria, will display bits of the microbe (antigens) on their outer surface. When the immune system recognizes the foreign antigens, T cells attack and kill the cells. Because scientists thought that neurons did not display antigens, they also thought that the neurons were exempt from T-cell attacks.

"That idea made sense because, except in rare circumstances, our brains cannot make new neurons to replenish ones killed by the immune system," Dr. Sulzer says. "But, unexpectedly, we found that some types of neurons can display antigens."

Cells display antigens with special proteins called MHCs. Using postmortem brain tissue donated to the Columbia Brain Bank by healthy donors, Dr. Sulzer and his postdoc Carolina Cebrián, PhD, first noticed -- to their surprise -- that MHC-1 proteins were present in two types of neurons. These two types of neurons -- one of which is dopamine neurons in a brain region called the substantia nigra -- degenerate during Parkinson's disease.

To see if living neurons use MHC-1 to display antigens (and not for some other purpose), Drs. Sulzer and Cebrián conducted in vitro experiments with mouse neurons and human neurons created from embryonic stem cells. The studies showed that under certain circumstances -- including conditions known to occur in Parkinson's -- the neurons use MHC-1 to display antigens. Among the different types of neurons tested, the two types affected in Parkinson's were far more responsive than other neurons to signals that triggered antigen display.

The researchers then confirmed that T cells recognized and attacked neurons displaying specific antigens.

The results raise the possibility that Parkinson's is partly an autoimmune disease, Dr. Sulzer says, but more research is needed to confirm the idea.

"Right now, we've showed that certain neurons display antigens and that T cells can recognize these antigens and kill neurons," Dr. Sulzer says, "but we still need to determine whether this is actually happening in people. We need to show that there are certain T cells in Parkinson's patients that can attack their neurons."

If the immune system does kill neurons in Parkinson's disease, Dr. Sulzer cautions that it is not the only thing going awry in the disease. "This idea may explain the final step," he says. "We don't know if preventing the death of neurons at this point will leave people with sick cells and no change in their symptoms, or not."

Crime going up? No way.

You probably figured this out before, but medical marijuana does not raise the crime rate. In fact, it may lower certain kinds of violent crime. 

The legalization of medical marijuana has sparked debate across the nation for decades. Some have argued that medical marijuana's legalization will lead to higher crime rates. But according to a new study at UT Dallas, legalization of medical cannabis is not an indicator of increased crime.

It actually may be related to reductions in certain types of crime, said Dr. Robert Morris, associate professor of criminology and lead author of the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

"We're cautious about saying, 'Medical marijuana laws definitely reduce homicide.' That's not what we're saying," Morris said. "The main finding is that we found no increase in crime rates resulting from medical marijuana legalization. In fact, we found some evidence of decreasing rates of some types of violent crime, namely homicide and assault."

The UT Dallas team began its work in summer 2012 after repeatedly hearing claims that medical marijuana legalization posed a danger to public health in terms of exposure to violent crime and property crime.

The study tracked crime rates across all 50 states between 1990 and 2006, when 11 states legalized marijuana for medical use: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Since the time period the study covered, 20 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized marijuana for medical use.

Using crime data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, the researchers studied rates for homicide, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft, teasing out an effect for the passing of medical marijuana laws.

None of the seven crime types increased with the legalization of medical marijuana.

Robbery and burglary rates were unaffected by medical marijuana legalization, according to the study. These findings run counter to the claim that marijuana dispensaries and grow houses lead to an increase in victimization because of the opportunities for crime linked to the amount of drugs and cash that are present.

Morris said the models accounted for an exhaustive list of sociodemographic and econometric variables that are well-established links to changes in crime rates, including statistics on poverty, unemployment, college education, prison inmates and even the amount of beer consumed per person per year. Data came from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"The results are remarkable," Morris said. "It's pretty telling. It will be interesting to see what future studies hold."

Once data are available, the researchers plan to investigate the relationship between recreational marijuana legalization and crime in Washington and Colorado, where the legalized marijuana marketplace is taking shape.

While it's too soon to say if there are definitive drawbacks to legalizing marijuana for medical purposes, Morris said, the study shows that legalization does not pose a serious crime problem, at least at the state level.

"This new information, along with continued education of the public on the realities of the negative aspects of smoking marijuana -- which there are considerable negative attributes -- will make the dialogue between those opposed and in favor of legalization on more of an even playing field," Morris said. "It takes away the subjective comments about the link between marijuana laws and crime so the dialogue can be more in tune with reality."

UT Dallas doctoral student Michael TenEyck, assistant professor Dr. J.C. Barnes and associate professor Dr. Tomislav V. Kovandzic, all from the criminology program, also contributed to the study as co-authors.

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A new ligament

Scientists have found a new ligament in the knee. When you think of all the knee operations from just sports injuries you'd figure that they would have seen it all.

But apparently not.

Despite successful ACL repair surgery and rehabilitation, some patients with ACL-repaired knees continue to experience so-called 'pivot shift', or episodes where the knee 'gives way' during activity. For the last four years, orthopaedic surgeons Dr Steven Claes and Professor Dr Johan Bellemans have been conducting research into serious ACL injuries in an effort to find out why. Their starting point: an 1879 article by a French surgeon that postulated the existence of an additional ligament located on the anterior of the human knee.

That postulation turned out to be correct: the Belgian doctors are the first to provide a full anatomical description of the ligament after a broad cadaver study using macroscopic dissection techniques. Their research shows that the ligament, called the anterolateral ligament (ALL), was noted to be present in all but one of the 41 cadaveric knees studied. Subsequent research shows that pivot shift, the giving way of the knee in patients with an ACL tear, is caused by an injury in the ALL ligament.

‪Some of the researchers' conclusions were recently published in the Journal of Anatomy. The Anatomical Society praised the research as "very refreshing" and commended the researchers for reminding the medical world that, despite the emergence of advanced technology, our knowledge of the basic anatomy of the human body is not yet exhaustive.

‪The research questions current medical thinking about serious ACL injuries and could signal a breakthrough in the treatment of patients with serious ACL injuries. Dr Claes and Professor Bellemans are currently working on a surgical technique to correct ALL injuries. Those results will be ready in several years.

‪ACL tears are common among athletes in pivot-heavy sports such as soccer, basketball, skiing and football.