Study Suggests Cannabis Can Restore Memory in Older Adults
Cannabis has been undeservedly linked to short-term memory loss, but the effects of the plant are much more complicated. New research suggests that cannabis may help improve memory, not decrease memory, in older adults. A recent study published in Nature Medicine on May 8 indicates that THC can slow age-related cognitive decline in mice. In the future, medical cannabis could be used as a therapy for dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, amnesia or other illnesses in the elderly.
A German research team, led by Andreas Zimmer, from the University of Bonn administered low doses of THC to mice at three stages of life—two months, 12 months and 18 months. Because a mouse’s lifespan is only about one to two years, any mouse a year old or older is considered an old mouse. The research team carried out three experiments. Mice were subjected to a water maze. Predictably, in the maze, old mice fared worse than young mice. Old mice that were treated with THC, however, completed the maze faster than young mice that were treated with THC. The next experiment involved locating a specific object. Old mice that had been treated with THC performed at the same standard as young mice that had not been treated with THC.
“Cannabis preparations and THC are used for medicinal purposes,” scientists wrote in the study “They have an excellent safety record and do not produce adverse side-effects when administered at a low dose to older individuals. Thus, chronic, low-dose treatment with THC or cannabis extracts could be a potential strategy to slow down or even to reverse cognitive decline in the elderly.”
Further experiments indicated that the improvement may be due to the fact that THC appears to restore hippocampal gene transcription patterns—the brain activity that is linked to memory.
“First of all there’s clearly growing interest in the potential therapeutic role of cannabinoids and in this particular case THC on various human conditions,”Zameel Cader, associate professor in clinical neurosciences at Oxford University told Newsweek. “This paper is addressing a possible role for that compound in memory and cognition, which is relevant to disorders such as Alzheimer’s and other dementias.” Cader is involved with a separate $13 million study on new applications of medical cannabis. The possibilities of cannabis as medicine are continually growing as research grows.
