4. Multiple Sclerosis
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has alerted the public that patients diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) have developed serious brain infections after taking the drug Gilenya (fingolimod).
Other drugs like Tysabri are antibody treatments designed to block certain white blood cells that cause MS when they attack nerves. the problem is they have a history of also making patients vulnerable to infection.
Biogen and Elan yanked theirs off the market after two cases of the brain disease were confirmed among patients taking the drug; a month later, a third case was confirmed. The FDA allowed the drug to return to the market in July 2006 after they stated benefits outweighed the risks, no doubt with some help from Big Pharma.
GW received government approval in 1998 to develop cannabis-based plant extracts. Their flagship product Sativex is a highly defined extract containing an approximately 50-50 mix of CBD and THC that has been approved by regulators in the UK and more than 20 other countries for treating pain and spasticity in Multiple Sclerosis.
Some forms of medical marijuana are proven to alleviate certain symptoms in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to guidelines published in the journal Neurology.
In a review of 2,608 studies, the researchers were able to assess which therapies had sufficient evidence to indicate that they may be effective for patients with MS. Overall, researchers discovered that certain forms of medical marijuana — a spray form and a pill form — appeared to have the most evidence indicating they may be helpful in patients with MS.
“What we learned are these specific forms of medical marijuana can ease patients’ symptoms — specific symptoms of spasticity, or muscle stiffness … and helped with frequent urination,”according to study author Dr. Pushpa Narayanaswami.
In a 2011 study, Israeli researchers showed that CBD helps treat MS-like symptomsby preventing immune cells from transforming and attacking the insulating covers of nerve cells in the spinal cord. After inducing an MS-like condition in mice — partially paralyzing their limbs — the researchers injected them with CBD. The mice responded by regaining movement, first twitching their tails and then beginning to walk without a limp. The researchers noted that the mice treated with CBD had much less inflammation in the spinal cord than their untreated counterparts.
In another study in Neuroscience researchers used experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), an animal model of MS, and found that cannabinoids reduced microglia activation, nitrotyrosine formation, T cell infiltration, oligodendrocyte toxicity, myelin loss and axonal damage in the mouse spinal cord white matter and alleviated the clinical scores when given either before or after disease onset.
