A psychosis, a severe mental disorder characterized by a loss of communication with reality, may include anxious hallucinations and delusions. Can hemp help with it?
Since no one has yet been able to identify a single cause of psychosis, it is even more difficult to prescribe treatment. But scientists in the new JAMA Psychiatry study seem to be on the right track. In it, they report that they have found a way to “restart” a brain suffering from psychosis using an incredible plant: hemp.
Hemp and its active ingredients
Researchers are increasingly finding evidence that the active ingredients of hemp can help alleviate symptoms in people with seizures, chronic pain, and post-traumatic stress disorder, but there is still much to learn about its relationship to psychosis. The most well-known cannabinoid Δ⁹-tetrahydrocannabinol, better known as THC, was previously associated with the development of psychosis in some people. But in a new study, the authors report that another cannabinoid, called cannabidiol - CBD, can really help with treatment.
Cannabidiol or CBD
Cannabidiol (CBD), another compound found in hemp, seems to "restart" the brains of people with a high risk of developing psychosis in high doses.
In the article, a team of British researchers shows that a single dose of CBD can normalize brain activity associated with psychosis. Psychosis is associated with characteristic patterns of brain activation, which are detected by MRI in the striatum, medial temporal lobe, and the midbrain. In a double-blind study, 33 people were at high risk of developing psychosis and 19 healthy, the authors of the study found that patients at high risk of developing psychosis had abnormally increased activity in these regions compared to healthy subjects. But one large dose of CBD - 600 milligrams - quickly and significantly reduced brain activity in these areas of the brain, up to a normal level.
“These results will undoubtedly open the way for the development of a new class of antipsychotic therapies,” said Sanjik Bhattacharya, Ph.D., professor of translational neuroscience and psychiatry at King's College London and the first author of the study. “From previous studies, we knew that CBD has antipsychotic effects, but we didn’t know how it works.”
The researchers found that CBD reduces activity in the caudate nucleus (red/yellow), part of the midbrain, associated with the clinical risk of psychosis.
The new study is not the first, which shows the therapeutic advantage of CBD. Some of the scientists who prepared this study also published a study in December 2017, which showed that patients treated with CBD had weakened psychotic symptoms and were by psychiatrists less likely to be considered as psychotic.
This study raised a big question about exactly how CBD works, and this latter seems to have shed light on this question. Although the subjects in this study were not actually diagnosed with psychosis, they showed alarming symptoms indicating a high risk of developing psychosis. The fact that CBD has “reset” or normalized their brain activity to normal levels suggests that researchers are on the right track.
CBD, in particular, has a low potential for abuse because it is not psychoactive.
The next step of the authors of the study is to launch a clinical study of the effect of CBD on psychosis. “If successful, this test will provide definitive proof of the role of cannabidiol as an antipsychotic treatment and will pave the way for use in clinics,” said Bhattacharya. “Our results have begun to unravel brain mechanisms for a new medication that works in a completely different way compared to traditional antipsychotics.”
