Dementia and Marijuana

Marijuana Doesn't Curb Agitation, Aggression in Dementia

Pauline Anderson

May 21, 2015

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DRUG & REFERENCE INFORMATION

• Neurological Manifestations of Vascular Dementia
• Vascular Dementia
• EEG in Dementia and Encephalopathy

Low-dose oral tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) does not reduce behavioral disturbances in patients with dementia, but it is well tolerated, a trial shows.

The fact that 4.5 mg of THC daily did not produce adverse events suggests that the dose was too low, said study author Marcel Olde Rikkert, MD, PhD, professor, geriatrics, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

"With a higher dose that has more biological effects, I'm pretty sure that we would have found some of the adverse effects that we found earlier using higher doses in younger volunteers," he told Medscape Medical News.

The "trick," he said, is finding a balance between a dose that's high enough for a biological effect but that's low enough to avoid significant adverse effects./.../