Orange County, CA - November 21st, 2018 - Psychosis is a general term to describe a set of symptoms of mental illnesses that result in strange or bizarre thinking, perceptions, behaviors, and emotions. Psychosis is a brain-based condition that is made better or worse by environmental factors, like drug use and stress. Most treatments involve the individual to take medication, hospitalization, or therapy.
Researchers from King’s College London discovered that a single dose of cannabidiol, also known as CBD, can help decrease brain function abnormalities detected in people with psychosis. CBD is the second most prevalent of the active ingredients of cannabis. While it is an essential component of medical marijuana, it is derived directly from the hemp plant, which is a counterpart of the marijuana plant. The United States approved CBD as a treatment for childhood epilepsies.
“The mainstays of current treatment for people with psychosis are drugs that were first discovered in the 1950s and unfortunately do not work for everyone. Our results have started unraveling the brain mechanisms of a new drug that works in a completely different way to traditional antipsychotics,” said Dr. Sagnik Bhattacharyya, from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience.The trial was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) which provided the first evidence of how CBD acts in the brain to reduce psychotic symptoms. The researchers had 33 young participants who have not been diagnosed with psychosis but have experiencing distressing psychotic symptoms, along with 19 other healthy individuals. 16 participants received a single dose of CBD, and the additional 17 received a placebo. Each participant was asked to perform a memory task while in an MRI scanner, which engages the three regions of the brain known to be involved in psychosis.
The study results were that the brain activity in the at-risk individuals was abnormal compared to the healthy individuals. However, among the participants who took CBD, the irregular brain activity was less severe than for those who received a placebo, which suggests that CBD can help re-adjust brain activity to normal levels
King’s College London had prior research that showed that cannabidiol appears to work in opposition to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the ingredient in cannabis responsible for getting users high which has been linked to the development of psychosis. THC mimics some of the effects of psychosis, while CBD has the opposite neurological and behavioral outcomes.
“There is an urgent need for a safe treatment for young people at risk of psychosis. One of the main advantages of cannabidiol is that it is safe and seems to be very well tolerated, making it in some ways an ideal treatment. If successful, this trial will provide definitive proof of cannabidiol’s role as an antipsychotic treatment and pave the way for use in the clinic,” says Dr. Bhattacharyya.Dr. Bhattacharyya and colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, are now launching the first large-scale trial to examine whether CBD to treat young people at high risk of developing psychosis.
