Female rats that ingested vaporized cannabis daily for a month developed a blunted physical response to stress, according to a new study by Washington State University researchers.
In contrast, male rats that had access to the same cannabis strain over the same 30-day window did not experience any physiological changes in their response to stressful conditions.
The results of the study, which were published in the journal Neurobiology of Stress, point out that there may be significant differences in how harmful cannabis use affects men and women.
The work of WSU scientists also establishes a direct, experimental relationship between harmful cannabis use and wet pressure reactivity.
We could show with almost certainty that the use of harmful cannabis can, in fact, significantly reduce the recurrence of stress in female rats. To date, no-one has been able to determine whether this stress response is the cause or effect of cannabis use. “
Carrie Cuttler, Associate Professor of Psychology, WSU and Co-Author of the Study
One of the main reasons why cannabis scientists could not link smoking to a silent stress response is that, in human studies, they cannot practically or ethically specify their test subjects for cannabis use or prevention. prevented them from consuming the drug for its duration before starting a test.
Because of these and other issues, researchers interested in studying the harmful effects of cannabis use have relied on animal models, in which rats are injected with isolated components of cannabis. cannabis to study the effects of the drug.
“The problem with this approach is that it stresses the rats and doesn’t employ the same neurobiologic cycles that take a drug of your own free will,” said Ryan McLaughlin, senior assistant professor of single-stranded psychology and neuro-science at WSU and co -author of the paper. “To address this challenge, we have developed a more natural cannabis delivery system that allows rats to self-administer vaporized cannabis whenever they feel like it.”
For the study, McLaughlin and his team trained rats to push their noses into a hole with an infrared beam inside when they wanted a puff of cannabis valves. The researchers then measured levels of the hormone corticosterone before and after a 30-day period in male and female rats placed in a cannabis-free control group or one of three experimental cannabis-tested test groups. of low, medium or high potash.
Initially, all rats had similar spikes in corticosterone levels when the condition was severe.
After the 30-day self-administration period, only the female rats that had access to the moderate cannabis potency showed a very quiet psychological response. The rats that had access to the cannabis moderate potency tended to respond more to the substance and had a higher concentration of the drug in their blood after the test which may explain why this group specifically showed the blunted pressure response.
“Interestingly, we found that the rats that had access to cannabis with a higher capacity tended to respond less and had a lower concentration of THC in their blood after the test than the rats who gained access to the medium potency cannabis, “McLaughlin said.” What we expect to study in the future is what causes this difference as well as why it seems to women are more willing to accept the weight effects of cannabis.
While the work of McLaughlin and Cuttler suggests that cannabis may have some benefits in providing weight-bearing flexibility, both researchers stressed that the release of stress hormones typically serves a variable purpose. , allowing a person to move energy sources and deal appropriately with environmental threats.
“Inability to put a proper hormonal response to stress can have adverse effects that can be harmful to the individual,” Cuttler said. “Research on cannabis is really just coming up as a legal result, and our ongoing work will play an important role in better understanding both the benefits and the consequences of cannabis. harmful cannabis use may be associated with both women and men. “
Source:
Washington State University
Magazine Reference:
Glodosky, NC, et al. (2020) Self-administration of cannabis valves results in sex-specific and dose-dependent changes in pressure regeneration in rats. Neurobiology of Stress. doi.org/10.1016/j.ynstr.2020.100260.