November/21/2019
On November 13, the research director at the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative, Dr Ziva Cooper, announced that they are about to start a study to find out how men and women respond to marijuana and the factors contributing to the difference in their reaction.
Dr Cooper was awarded a $3.5 million grant by the National Institute of Health (NIH) to investigate the pain-relieving properties of marijuana and its cannabinoids. The study is supposed to last for a period of five years.
In January this year, Cooper was chosen as the research for the first clinical trials at the Cannabis Research Initiative (CRI) founded back in 2017 as part of the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. The grant will be used to finance the first clinical trials at the CRI, which was the first in the world to study marijuana.
Cooper is also a professor-in-residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He said that the clinical trials biobehavioral to answer significant public health issues related to the potential healing and adverse impacts of marijuana and cannabinoids.
The Cannabis Research Initiative study will also explore the addictive properties of marijuana and determine whether the effects differ between men and women.
In a statement released by UCLA, Cooper said that the studies conducted on animals reveal that male animals are more sensitive to the pain-relieving effects of THC, which is the main compound of marijuana compared to the male animals. He further said that we are in an era where the number of women consuming cannabis is increasing rapidly, and the study will aid the researchers to clearly understand how male and female reactions differ when exposed to the therapeutic and adverse effects of marijuana.
The study will also examine if the body’s cannabinoid system, ‘hormones and endocannabinoids,” contribute to the difference in reactions.
