Abstract
BackgroundSignificant interest has emerged in the therapeutic and interactive effects of different cannabinoids. Cannabidiol (CBD) has been shown to have anxiolytic and antipsychotic effects with high doses administered orally. We report a series of studies conducted to determine the vaporisation efficiency of high doses of CBD, alone and in combination with ∆9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), to achieve faster onset effects in experimental and clinical trials and emulate smoked cannabis.MethodsPurified THC and CBD (40 mg/ml and 100 mg/ml respectively) were loaded onto a liquid absorbing pad in a Volcano® vaporiser, vaporised and the vapours quantitatively analysed. Preliminary studies determined 200 mg CBD to be the highest dose effectively vaporised at 230°C, yielding an availability of approximately 40% in the vapour phase. Six confirmatory studies examined the quantity of each compound delivered when 200 mg or 4 mg CBD was loaded together with 8 mg of THC.ResultsTHC showed 55% availability when vaporised alone or with low dose CBD, while large variation in the availability of high dose CBD impacted upon the availability of THC when co-administered, with each compound affecting the vaporisation efficiency of the other in a dynamic and dose-dependent manner. We describe optimised protocols that enable delivery of 160 mg CBD through vaporisation.ConclusionsWhile THC administration by vaporisation is increasingly adopted in experimental studies, often with oral predosing with CBD to examine interactive effects, no studies to date have reported the administration of CBD by vaporisation. We report the detailed methodology aimed at optimising the efficiency of delivery of therapeutic doses of CBD, alone and in combination with THC, by vaporisation. These protocols provide a technical advance that may inform methodology for clinical trials in humans, especially for examining interactions between THC and CBD and for therapeutic applications of CBD.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN24109245
Highlights
Significant interest has emerged in the therapeutic and interactive effects of different cannabinoids
Preliminary experiments Results from the series of pilot studies [see Additional file 1] determined that vaporisation of CBD at 230°C was superior to 210°C, in terms of the quantity of CBD delivered into the balloon (Pilot study 1)
A decision was made to continue experiments with the normal size balloon for its greater ease of inhalation. 100 mg of CBD dissolved in ethanol (Pilot study 4) delivered a similar amount of vapour as was observed in the prior work using 100 mg solid form CBD, about 25% of the loaded dose, replicating this finding and establishing the viability of loading CBD dissolved in ethanolic solution
Summary
Significant interest has emerged in the therapeutic and interactive effects of different cannabinoids. Cannabidiol (CBD) has been shown to have anxiolytic and antipsychotic effects with high doses administered orally. The primary psychoactive constituent of cannabis, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), has therapeutic effects in humans, but has largely been associated with a range of adverse effects, including the induction of psychotic-like symptoms and memory impairment [1]. Another major constituent of cannabis plant matter, cannabidiol (CBD), has been shown to have anxiolytic and antipsychotic properties [2,3] and to ameliorate some of the adverse effects of THC [4,5]. Smoking and intravenous administration produce reliable and similar pharmacokinetic profiles [9,10], but respectively carry toxic risks and loss of active drug by combustion, or are invasive
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