Marijuana-Like Drugs May Offer Addiction-Free Pain Relief

As abuse of prescription opioids in the US has reached epidemic proportions, researchers across the nation have been trying to find different methods to supply individuals ache aid, ways in which do not deliver such a threat of habit.

Now, two unbiased groups of researchers have developed medication much like marijuana that present proof of offering ache aid in laboratory animals, however haven't any obvious addictive properties and don't trigger a "excessive" that impairs motor operate.

The researchers offered their work at the moment (Nov. 14) at a information convention on the annual assembly of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego. [11 Odd Facts About Marijuana]

Almost 50 million American adults have important continual ache, based on a government-funded examine revealed final 12 months within the Journal of Ache. And opioids — a category of medication that features OxyContin, Vicodin and morphine — are generally prescribed for ache. An estimated 20 p.c of sufferers with ache obtain an opioid prescription, a charge that has quadrupled since 1999, based on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC).

Nevertheless, opioids are extremely addictive. The CDC estimates that 2 million Individuals abused or had been depending on prescription opioids in 2014, contributing to about 14,000 deaths that 12 months (CDC information exhibits that an equal variety of yearly deaths are attributable to heroin, which is an unlawful opioid.)

Researchers lately have tried to create drug compounds that may goal ache receptors within the mind however not have an effect on opioid receptors, the supply for opioid habit. Marijuana can present some ache aid, however the drug has undesirable unwanted effects, equivalent to motor impairment and reminiscence loss, and could be doubtlessly addictive, though it's not an opioid drug. [‪America's Opioid-Use Epidemic: 5 Startling Facts]

One analysis group, led by Andrea Hohmann, a professor of neuroscience at Indiana College, has developed a category of compounds that partially mimics the motion of the principle psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, THC, brief for tetrahydrocannabinol. THC stimulates cannabinoid receptors within the mind to launch endocannabinoids, pure pain-relieving molecules.

Hohmann's compounds, referred to as constructive allosteric modulators, or PAMs, bind to a not too long ago found website on a cannabinoid mind receptor referred to as CB1, however they don't bind to the standard THC receptor or the opioid receptor. In consequence, the compound produces ache aid with out the excessive related to marijuana and with out the danger of habit.

In experiments, the compound supplied ache aid to laboratory mice that got paclitaxel, a standard most cancers chemotherapy drug recognized to wreck nerves and trigger ache.

The PAMs acted in "a really focused means [and] amplified the therapeutic impact of endocannabinoids," Hohmann instructed Dwell Science. "You possibly can view it as 'turning up the achieve.'" [5 Surprising Facts About Pain]

Not like marijuana or prescription opioids, the PAM compounds "don't hit each receptor all over the place," she added.

One other group of researchers, led by Jason Clapper, a scientist at Abide Therapeutics in San Diego, took a unique strategy and developed a compound that not directly elevated the quantity of pure cannabinoids within the brains of rats, which relieved the animals' continual ache signs.

Clapper's compound blocked the physique's manufacturing of a protein referred to as MGLL, which by means of a collection of occasions, triggered a launch of the mind's pure endocannabinoids, and introduced subsequent ache aid.

"At present's findings reveal a greater understanding of the physique's cannabinoid system and easy methods to modulate it," stated Margaret Haney, a drug-abuse skilled at Columbia College in New York who was not related to both analysis mission. "There are actually numerous methods to focus on this method and presumably alleviate ache and different illness with out counting on marijuana."

Hohmann famous the trail to people research "generally is a lengthy, sluggish street" however she's very excited concerning the potential for this line of remedy.

Observe Christopher Wanjek @wanjek for each day tweets on well being and science with a humorous edge. Wanjek is the creator of "Meals at Work" and "Unhealthy Drugs." His column, Unhealthy Drugs, seems commonly on Dwell Science.