Natural Remedies, Home Remedies and Herbal cures

Madrid, Spain: Compounds in marijuana inhibit malignant brain tumor growth in animals, and may provide a potential therapy for human glioma patients, according to a clinical review appearing in the September issue of Neuropharmacology.

“Current therapeutic strategies for the treatment of [gliomas] are usually ineffective or just palliative,” researchers from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Madrid’s Complutense University wrote. “During the last few years, several studies have shown that cannabinoids … slow the growth of different types of tumours, including gliomas, in laboratory animals. Cannabinoids induce apoptosis (programmed cell death) of glioma cells [in vitro.] In addition, cannabinoid treatment inhibits angiogenesis (growth) of gliomas in vivo. Remarkably, cannabinoids kill glioma cells selectively and can protect non-transformed glial cells from death. These and other findings reviewed here might set the basis for a potential use of cannabinoids in the management of gliomas.”

Last year, a clinical review in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer made similar recommendations, noting that cannabinoids possess a “favorable drug safety profile” and have shown in clinical trials to inhibit various forms of cancerous tumors, including gliomas, lung carcinoma, breast cancer, skin cancer, thyroid cancer, lymphoma, and prostate cancer.

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Senior Policy Analyst, at (202) 483-5500. Abstracts of the review are available online at:
http://else.hebis.de/cgi-bin/sciserv.pl?collection=journals&journal=00283908

The author

For patients and their physicians, let this report serve as a primer for those who are considering using or recommending medicinal cannabis. For others, let this report serve as an introduction to the broad range of emerging clinical applications for cannabis and its various compounds.

Paul Armentano
Deputy Director
NORML | NORML Foundation
Washington, DC
January 24, 2008

* The author would like to acknowledge Drs. Dale Gieringer, Gregory Carter, Steven Karch, and Mitch Earleywine, as well as NORML interns John Lucy, Christopher Rasmussen, and Rita Bowles, for providing research assistance for this report. The NORML Foundation would also like to acknowledge Dale Gieringer, Paul Kuhn, and Richard Wolfe for their financial contributions toward the publication of this report.

** Important and timely publications such as this are only made possible when concerned citizens become involved with NORML. For more information on joining NORML or making a donation, please visit: http://www.norml.org/join. Tax deductible donations in support of NORML’s public education campaigns should be made payable to the NORML Foundation.

http://norml.com/index.cfm?Group_ID=7002

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“Prohibition…goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.” — Abraham Lincoln December 1840
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