The use of cannabis as a therapeutic and recreational substance goes back to thousands of years throughout Asia, Middle East, Southern Africa, and South America. The discovery of Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC) by Mechoulam and Gaoni in the midsixties as the major psychoactive constituent of cannabis sativa [1, 2] led to another important discovery, namely, its specific binding site that was ...

D-Tetrahydrocannabinol (D-THC) is the principal psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. We examined the effects of DTHC on glutamatergic synaptic transmission. Reducing the extracellular Mg concentration bathing rat hippocampal neurons in culture to 0.1 mM elicited a repetitive pattern of glutamatergic synaptic activity that produced intracellular Ca concentration spikes that were measured by ind...

OBJECTIVES Diabetic neuropathy (DN) is a common complication of diabetes that leads to allodynia, impaired nerve conduction, and progressive sensory loss. The aim of this study was to observe the effect of a high-affinity cannabinoid receptors agonist, WIN 55,212-2, on thermal hyperalgesia, nerve conduction velocity and sciatic nerve histopathology in diabetic rats. MATERIALS AND METHODS Diab...

Recent studies have provided evidence that corticofugal feedback (CFF) from the olfactory cortex to the olfactory bulb (OB) can significantly impact the state of excitation of output mitral cells (MCs) and tufted cells (TCs) and also modulate neural synchrony. Interpreting these effects however has been complicated by the large number of cell targets of CFF axons in the bulb. Within the granule...

A 62-year-old male presented to the ER with three episodes of diffuse abdominal pain which occurred after eating. He had a history of renal cell carcinoma (RCC), prostate cancer and bladder cancer. FDG-PET/CT scan showed a hypermetabolic soft tissue density within the fundus of the gallbladder. The patient underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy and surgical pathology revealed clear cell type RC...

The amygdala is thought to mediate memory consolidation of amphetamine-induced conditioned place preference, a behavioral paradigm that requires memory for an association between environmental cues and the affective state produced by the drug treatment. Here we show that amphetamine induces long-term synaptic depression (LTD) in the amygdala. Amphetamine LTD is not affected by dopamine, seroton...

The role of cannabinoids in thrombosis remains controversial. In view of the primary importance of tissue factor (TF) in blood coagulation and its involvement in the pathology of several cardiovascular, inflammatory and neoplastic diseases, a regulation of this initial procoagulant signal seems to be of particular interest. Using human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) the present study ...