Cannabis-like medicine might kill pain while not the high

An ingenious set of experiments has teased apart the mind-altering and pain-relieving effects of the most part of cannabis.This would possibly open the due to cannabis-like medicine that offer pain relief while not inflicting unwanted highs.

Cannabis is taken as a painkiller – to boring pain in willcer as an example – however it can manufacture unpleasant facet effects like hallucinations and impaired mobility.

Now, a group led by Li Zhang of the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Maryland, has shown that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the active part in cannabis that creates folks high however that's additionally thought to boring pain – binds to completely different molecular targets on cells to provide these 2 effects.

It has long been known that THC offers folks a high by binding to a molecular anchor on cells referred to as the cannabinoid type-1 (CB1) receptor. Zhang and his group invented that THC palliates pain by binding instead to receptors for the brain-signalling compound glycine and increasing their activity.

Through try out on mice, they then reassert that if the glycine receptor is absent or if its activity is blocked by another drug, the animals experienced pain in a very customary "tail-flick" take a look at even when given THC, confirming that the drug's pain-relief and psychotropic effects may be decoupled.