James Beck 00:00:08
When it comes to the use of medical marijuana in Parkinson’s disease, it’s not clear what it can be useful for right now. What we think it could be useful for is helping deal with some of the non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, specifically anxiety from Parkinson’s disease. People with advanced PD may lose weight, so being able to help people with appetite to regain that weight. To help people with pain. Pain is one of these really pernicious non-motor symptoms of PD that is not easily treated.
It can be useful for these other issues that may be of great benefit to people with Parkinson’s disease.
The known risks for marijuana in Parkinson’s disease are multiple. First of all, this is not your father’s marijuana. Marijuana potency has increased dramatically since the 1970s through increased breeding. Marijuana is incredibly potent, so the effects may not be what people expect. Along those same lines, people with PD may already experience slowness in thinking, cognition problems, balance problems, and may be prone to hallucinations or paranoia. These are all symptoms that can be exacerbated by marijuana, and it’s the last thing you want a person with PD to experience—an exacerbation of their condition.
James Beck 00:01:41
What do we know about marijuana and Parkinson’s disease? Not very much. That’s the reason why the Parkinson’s Foundation is really leading the field to generate that basic level of information about what we know and what we don’t know about medical marijuana and Parkinson’s disease, and how we can move the field forward.
Only until recently has marijuana been able to be researched on a more broad scale. In the U.S., those restrictions are slowly lifting. Certainly elsewhere in the world, those restrictions are gone. North of the border in Canada, medical marijuana is more widely available than here in the United States.
It’s still against the law at the federal level, but many states are beginning to allow its use. What we need to do as a community—and this is why the Parkinson’s Foundation is taking the lead—is understand what access means to marijuana. How do we translate that into efficacy for people with Parkinson’s disease? How do we understand the different formulations of medical marijuana, the different potencies, and the different combinations of CBD and THC? What’s best for a person with Parkinson’s disease at an early stage, a mid-stage, or a late stage?
It’s that information that we need to gather as a community so that when people with Parkinson’s disease are asking the question, “Is medical marijuana right for me?” we have answers that can help them make that decision for themselves.
At this convening that we plan to hold, we’ll be bringing experts from around the world who specialize in regulatory aspects. We’ll bring in industry representatives who have navigated the hurdles of the FDA in order to get cannabis-derived medications approved for human use. We’ll have basic scientists who can understand the potential that cannabis derivatives may have in altering the course of Parkinson’s disease.
We’ll have clinicians in the room who are experts in mood disorders and who also have experience with cannabis and can help guide us on what cannabis may or may not be useful for.
