CBD enhances cognitive function in an experimental model of familial Alzheimer’s

A two-week course of high doses of CBD helps restore the function of two proteins that are important in reducing beta-amyloid plaque accumulation, a sign of Alzheimer’s disease, and improving cognitive modeling. trial of early familial Alzheimer’s, researchers report.

The TREM2 and IL-33 proteins are important for the ability of the brain’s immune cells to literally eat dead cells and other debris such as the beta-amyloid plaque that accumulates in a patient’s brain, and levels of both the reduction in Alzheimer’s.

The researchers report for the first time that CBD normalizes levels and function, improving psychiatry as it also reduces levels of the immune protein IL-6, which is associated with the high levels of inflammation found in Alzheimer’s, says Dr. Babak Baban, immunologist and associate dean for research at Georgia College of Dentistry and corresponding author of the study.

Novel therapies are desperately needed to improve outcomes for patients with this condition, which is considered one of the fastest growing health risks in the United States, DCG researchers and Georgia Medical College writes in the Journal of Alzheimer’s disease.

“We currently have two types of drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer’s,” says Dr. John Morgan, a pathologist and director of the Movement and Memory Disorder Programs in the MCG Department of Neurology. One class increases levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is also reduced in Alzheimer’s, and another works through the NMDA receptors that are involved in communication between neurons and important for memory.

But we have nothing to reach the pathophysiology of the disease. “

Dr. John Morgan, Coauthor Study

The DCG and MCG researchers decided to look at the ability of CBD to address some of the major degenerative brain systems in Alzheimer’s.

They found that CBD appears to normalize levels of IL-33, a protein that has the highest expression in humans normally in the brain, where it helps to sound the alarm. that an attacker acts as the beta-amyloid collector. Evidence is emerging about its role as a regulatory protein as well, whose function is to turn up or down the immune response dependent on the environment, Baban says. In Alzheimer’s, that involves turning inflammation down and trying to restore balance to the immune system, he says.

That up and down expression in health and disease could make IL-33 both a good biomarker and a treatment target for disease, the researchers say.

CBD also developed a sense of stimulus receptor expressed on myeloid 2 cells, or TREM2, which is found on the surface of the cells where it combines with other proteins to release signals that activate cells, which introduction of immune cells. In the brain, its definition is the microglial cells, a specific population of immune cells found directly in the brain where they are essential for the elimination of invaders such as viruses and neurons that are instably damaged.

Low levels of TREM2 and rare changes in TREM2 are associated with Alzheimer’s, and in their mouse model both TREM2 and IL-33 were low.

Both are essential for a natural, ongoing home maintenance process in the brain called phagocytosis, in which microglial cells regularly consume beta amyloid, which is regularly excreted in the brain, the product of pre- amyloid-beta, which is important for the synapses, or points of connection, between neurons, and which the plate breaks down.

They found that CBD treatment increased levels of IL-33 and TREM2 – seven times and ten times respectively.

The effect of CBD on brain activity in the mouse model of early onset Alzheimer’s was assessed by methods such as the ability to differentiate between a familiar and a new one, as well as monitoring the movement of rodents.

People with Alzheimer’s may have mobility problems such as stiffness and obscenity, says Dr. Hesam Khodadadi, a graduate student working in Baban’s laboratory. Mice with the disease run in an endless tight cycle, stopping behavior with CBD treatment, says Khodadadi, the study’s first author.

The next steps involve determining the optimal doses and taking CBD earlier in the disease process. The fertilizer was given at late stages for the published study, and now the researchers are using it at the first signs of mental decline, Khodadadi says. They are also examining delivery systems including the use of an induction device that should help deliver CBD more directly to the brain. For the published studies, CBD was injected into the mice ‘s abdomen every other day for two weeks.

A company has developed both animal and human inhalers for the researchers who have also been studying the effects of CBD on adult respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, a buildup of fluid in the lungs that is a major lethal complication of COVID-19, as well as other serious illnesses such as sepsis and primary trauma. The CBD doses used for the Alzheimer’s study were the only ones the researchers successfully used to reduce the “cytokine storm” of ARDS, which can cause unstable lung damage.

Cognitive disease is a hereditary form of Alzheimer’s in which symptoms usually appear in the 30s and 40s and occur in about 10-15% of patients.

CBD should be at least as effective in the most common type of uncommon Alzheimer’s, which seems to have more targets for CBD, Baby notes. They are already looking at its potential in a model of this most common type and are moving forward to establish a clinical trial.

In addition to neurofibrillary tangles, a collection of the tau proteins inside neurons, are key components of Alzheimer’s, Morgan says. Beta-amyloid usually appears in the brain 15-20 years or more before dementia, he says, and the appearance of tau tangles, which can occur up to 10 years later, is associated with onset depression. There is little interplay between beta amyloid and tau that reduce dysfunction each, Morgan notes.

The Food and Drug Administration plans to make a decision in early June on a new drug aducanumab, which would be the first to attack and help clear amyloid beta, Morgan says.