HIV - AIDS

HIV is an immune deficiency virus, which afflicts immune system and kills white blood cells. Patient’s immunity is consequently weakened and makes him or her vulnerable to various infection diseases. These include e.g. pneumonia, meningitis, encephalitis, tuberculosis or various oncological diseases. HIV virus can lead to development of AIDS, which is a syndrome of acquired immune deficiency that involves more infection diseases and low levels of lymphocytes CD4+.

Cannabis and Treatment of HIV/AIDS

Existing clinical research in this field is rather limited, however, a number of studies have already confirmed that cannabis is effective in suppressing various symptoms ranging from nausea, vomiting, and lack of appetite to low body weight, and neuropathic pain.

Most of these studies focused on patients administering synthetic THC in form of officially prescribed medicine Marinol, however, the vast majority of doctors and patients agrees that the inhalation of cannabis in plant form via smoking and vaporizing, or its oral consumption in form of extracts, drops, and tinctures enables patients to dose more accurately and better control its psychoactive effects. Moreover, cannabis does seem to have very unpleasant side effects of THC in synthetic form.

Mitigating Symptoms or More?

Cannabis not only mitigates the symptoms of HIV/AIDS and side effects of official medicines, but it also seems to slow down the progress of this disease. One of the studies found that denbinobin, one of the non-cannabinoid constituents found in cannabis, slows the replication of HIV virus. This mechanism should be further examined, but it already seems that active compounds in cannabis could be used to improve methods of HIV treatment.

Most recent clinical studies also show that inhalation of cannabis stimulates appetite of HIV patients by increasing the level of certain hormones in blood. In animal tests, THC was also associated with lower death rate and slower progression of the disease.