As it turns out the substance the gut produces to help keep the neutrophils at bay might be endocannabinoids
A new study from University of Massachusetts and University of Bath researchers is the first to demonstrate the physical process by which cannabis affects IBD, opening up the possibility of creating new drugs to treat these chronic ailments.
People with inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, face a chronic problem. Current treatment options are laden with side effects and require constant tweaking to remain effective. Some of those people have turned to marijuana for treatment
Researches studying the hundreds of species of microbes that live inside your gut have stumbled upon the connection between cannabis and intestinal inflammation.
Your gastrointestinal tract is in a constant balancing act of trying to ensure that just the right number of microbes are living in there. The gut employs particular kinds of white blood cells—called neutrophils—to operate as a kind of population control. But, when the neutrophils are left unchecked, they will begin to attack the gut itself. This will eventually lead to various forms of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) such as Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis.
As it turns out the substance the gut produces to help keep the neutrophils at bay might be endocannabinoids—chemicals produced in the body that mirror those found in the cannabis plant. At least that’s the case for mice, during the study.
The answer, reported in the new study out Monday in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, is a different pathway, also in the epithelial cells of the gut lining. That chemical pathway produces substances that prevent neutrophils from getting through the epithelial cells and into the gut. And it turns out those substances, in mice at least, are endocannabinoids. These fatty substances bind to the same chemical receptors as the cannabinoids found in, well, cannabis. Patients missing this secondary pathway “were more likely to develop ulcerative colitis,” McCormick says.
Although the current research is in mice, it points to a possible result in humans as well. It would help explain why cannabinoids seem to provide relief for people with IBD, because they perform basically the same regulatory function as the endocannabinoids would if the body were producing them itself. More research, of course, is needed, but McCormick says it opens up the possibility of creating new IBD treatments that work on the new pathway—including, perhaps, therapeutic agents extracted from marijuana.
Source – Popular Science
Image – Pixabay
