CBD Is Associated With Symptomatic Improvements In Dementia Patients
Cannabis tinctures, particularly ones containing CBD, are growing in popularity around the globe within the medical cannabis community for a multitude of reasons. For many years, cannabis flower was the most prominent form of medical cannabis, however, more and more patients are increasingly going the concentrated product route, including incorporating tinctures into their wellness strategies.
Tinctures are preferred by many cannabis patients because they do not typically contain many ingredients, and it is a smokeless form of cannabis consumption. For some patients, inhaled forms of medical cannabis are not an option.
The rise in the use of cannabis tinctures is paralleled by new questions regarding whether cannabis tinctures containing CBD are effective for patients suffering from dementia, both in the short and long term.
A team of researchers in Greece recently examined the use of CBD tinctures among dementia patients, and the results of the study were insightful. Below is more information about it via a news release from NORML:
Macedonia, Greece: The administration of a CBD tincture is associated with symptomatic improvements in patients with dementia, according to data published in the journal Clinical Gerontologist.
Investigators assessed the safety and efficacy of a three percent CBD tincture in a cohort of 20 dementia patients with severe behavioral and psychological symptoms. Ten of the patients received CBD treatment for six months, while the other ten received traditional therapies.
They reported: “The follow-up assessment … showed significant improvement of BPSD [behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia] in all our patients who received CBD, and no or limited improvement in the second group, regardless of the underlying neuropathology of dementia.”
Researchers concluded: “We suggest that CBD may be a more effective and safe choice for managing BPSD than the typical intervention. … Healthcare professionals should consider incorporating [it] into their practices to reduce BPSD in PwD [people with dementia]. … Future large randomized clinical trials are needed to re-assure these findings.”
The findings are consistent with those of several prior studies concluding that the administration of CBD-dominant cannabis plant extracts reduces agitation and provides other behavioral improvements in dementia patients.
Full text of the study, “The effect of cannabidiol 3% on neuropsychiatric symptoms in dementia – Six-month follow up,” appears in Clinical Gerontologist.