New Treatment To Help Patients Cope With Diabetes Mellitus Symptoms

While there are no clinical investigations of cannabis for the treatment of diabetes mellitus in scientific literature, there are a small number of preclinical studies that indicate that cannabinoids found in marijuana may provide symptomatic relief to those suffering from diabetes mellitus. Medical marijuana is also known to modify the progression of the disease according to a 2006 study published in the journal Autoimmunity.

The study reported that 5 mg injections of the non-psychoactive cannabinoid CBD every day significantly reduced the incidence of diabetes in mice and investigators reported that while around 86% of untreated control mice in the study developed diabetes, by contrast only 30% of mice that were treated with CBD developed the disease. Diabetes Mellitus refers to a set of autoimmune diseases that are characterized by defects in the secretion of insulin by the pancreas. This results in hyperglycemia or an extremely high concentration of glucose in the blood.

Type 1 diabetes or juvenile diabetes and Type 2 diabetes or adult onset diabetes are the two primary types of diabetes. While type 1 diabetes sufferers must rely on insulin medication for survival, sufferers of type 2 diabetes produce insufficient amounts of insulin and their condition can typically be controlled by diet. In fact, statistics indicate that after heart disease and cancer, diabetes mellitus is the third major cause of death in the United States. It may also lead to nerve damage, kidney failure, blindness, hardening of the arteries, and eventually death.

Researchers at the Medical College of Virginia reported in the March 2006 issue of the American Journal of Pathology that CBD treated rats experienced significant protection from diabetic retinopathy when they were treated for periods of 1 to 4 weeks. Diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of blindness in adults is characterized by a breakdown of the blood-retinal barrier and retinal oxygen deprivation. There are other preclinical trials that have demonstrated the beneficial effects of cannabinoids in animal models of diabetes.

Medical marijuana is known to alleviate neuropathic pain associated with diabetes mellitus and studies published in the journal Neuroscience Letters in 2004 reported that mice who were administered a receptor agonist for cannabis experienced a decrease in diabetes related tactile allodynia or pain resulting from a non-injurious skin stimulus when compared with the non treated controls. These findings suggest that the cannabinoids in MMJ may have great therapeutic potential to treat experimental neuropathic pain triggered by diabetes mellitus.