As the world’s population ages, the number of people living with dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease increases.
Given the lack of curative treatments and the limited effectiveness of available medications, interest in new therapeutic approaches is growing. Among them are cannabinoids from the cannabis plant.
A small new Brazilian study published in the international Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease investigated the effects of microdoses of cannabis extract on patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. The results found positive effects, without the associated “high” of cannabis.
The logic of microdoses
The study, led by Professor Francisney Nascimento and colleagues at the Federal University of Latin American Integration (UNILA), recruited 24 elderly patients (60-80 years) diagnosed with mild Alzheimer’s.
It evaluated the effects of daily use of an oil prepared from cannabis extract containing THC and CBD in similar proportions and extremely low concentrations (0.3 mg of each cannabinoid). These sub-psychoactive doses do not cause the “high” associated with recreational use of the plant.
The extract used was donated by ABRACE, Brazil’s biggest patient association, and had no contribution from cannabis companies or other funding sources.
“Microdosing” is a term usually associated with recreational use of psychedelics. Given the size of the dose, it would be easy to question whether it could have any effect at all.
Doses below 1 mg of the cannabinoid compounds are not frequently reported in the literature of clinical practice. However, the researchers’ decision to use microdosing did not come out of nowhere.
In 2017, the group led by Andreas Zimmer and Andras Bilkei-Gorzo had already demonstrated that very low doses of THC restored cognition in elderly mice, reversing gene expression patterns and brain synapse density in the hippocampus to levels similar to those of young animals.
Hellbound and Down 