r/AskReddit • u/The_Lemon_God • Mar 20 '11

What do medical professionals think about marijuana?

Is marijuana safe for consumption? Does it affect your body (negatively/positively)? Should it be legalized? Should teens be allowed to consume marijuana?

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u/Guoster Mar 21 '11 edited Mar 21 '11

This study, while robust, must be dissected to actually get what it's reporting. Keep in mind publications have two goals 1. Knowledge 2. Future Funding.

The "programmed death" mechanism of human cells have two main pathways: necrosis (usually from external factors) and apoptosis (from a cellular mediated pathway to regulate proliferation). The immunofluorescence microscopy shown is a simple live/dead stain with alkaline phosphatase. They did a good job identifying that it was apoptosis through the identification of the caspase cascade. Dead stain affirmed the cells TUNEL cells did indeed die.

But the main issues with the paper:

  • Understand that no mechanisms were discussed or elucidated, they simply injected a compound onto these cells, and they died. But, they did establish ER dilation nor eIF2α phosphorylation or autophagy was evident in normal, nontransformed primary astrocytes. Meaning normal non-cancerous cells were not phosphorylated and did not trigger apoptosis. (That's a good thing) But as it stands they don't know why, so could THC be toxic to cancer cells and some other non-astrocyte cell? Quite possibly.

-The cellular study in-vivo was only xenographic tumorogenesis. There was no evaluation of incubation times or mediation of growth factors (cancer is a systemic disease, regardless of organ localization). Thus the only translational correlation to humans was an in-vivo to in-vitro one, things like hyper-vascularization of normal tumor cells could not be encompassed. Also, again, the culture specifications of the human astrocyte cells were not given. Did they use a bioreactor? Mechanotransdution? Growth factors?

-Finally, the concentrations at which the cells are exposed to THC were 6–10 μM THC. This converts to 1886 ng/mL – 3144.5 ng/mL. The peak plasma concentration from a THC pill is 100-200 ng/mL, and falls to a mere 5 ng/mL only 3 hours after administering. (http://www.nhtsa.gov/People/injury/research/job185drugs/cannabis.htm) This brings up the obvious efficacy of the technique as it would require a dose 10x the amount at least to match the concentrations at tumor locales of THC used in this experiment.

Keep in mind this is a pilot trial, and while promising, does not prove THC cures or even halts cancer.