United States: A manmade version of a component found in marijuana lowers the level of aggression in Alzheimer’s patients, according to the study.
Synthetic THC (dronabinol) also contributed to the improved well-being of patients’ caregivers, research demonstrated at Thursday’s meeting of the International Psychogeriatrics Association in Buenos Aires.
As reported by the HealthDay, the findings could be encouraging to the families of the 7 million Americans who have Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. Nine out of 10 get behavior issues, and aggression is the most prevalent, happening to 4 in 10 patients.
These patients wake up at night, become restless and start racing, shouting, cursing and get physically coarse. It will also cause their caregivers to be exhausted and even develop depression.
‘While most people know that individuals with dementia have memory problems,’ said co-author Dr. Brent Forester, the director of behavioral health for Tufts Medicine in Boston, ‘it is the agitation that tends to land them in the emergency department and long-term care facilities.’ Let me now turn to the Dronabinol that also known as synthetic Marinol has the ability to save cost to health sector and also have positive impact on caregivers’ health both physically and mentally.
The new study had 75 outpatients with Alzheimer’s dementia. Over a period of three weeks, patients received either five milligrams of dronabinol twice a day, or an inactive placebo.
The agitation symptoms reduced in the patients who were administered with dronabinol, and the investigators commented that the drug has mild side effects.
‘Dronabinol seems to be a better or equally effective choice to the lone other FDA-approved antipsychotic agent for agitation in this patient category available today’, Forester pointed out.
Although future and more detailed assessments are required to identify possible treatment response and study the factors that may help to design subsequent trials and practice, the results of this study look very promising, Forester noted in the Tufts news release.
Just because these particular findings were initially presented at a medical meeting and specially they should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.