
HIV - Cornell Medicine
Can cannabis help those suffering from HIV?
Weill Cornell Medicine intends to find out.
The prestigious institution was recently awarded a five-year,
$11.6-million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse
(NIDA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the
effects that cannabis, including marijuana and compounds
derived from it, may have on the brains of those living with HIV.“We know that the virus may cause changes within the brain,
but it’s not clear yet how the use of cannabis might interact with
the infection,” said principal investigator Lishomwa Ndhlovu,
a professor of immunology in medicine in the Division of
Infectious Diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine, on cornell.edu.
Cannabis may exacerbate HIV’s effects on the brain, or it may
protect against them; researchers don’t know yet, he said. “This
support from NIDA will allow us to collect the data we need to
explore this relationship.”
The project is the newest component of NIDA’s SCORCH
program, which seeks to investigate how substances that can lead
to addiction may modify the effects of HIV in the brain, at the level
of individual cells, the university noted. “This cannabis research,
the second SCORCH project based at Weill Cornell Medicine,
is being led by Ndhlovu; Michael Corley, assistant professor of
immunology in medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases;
and Dionna Whitney Williams, assistant professor of molecular
and comparative pathobiology at Johns Hopkins University
School Medicine. An earlier project, begun in 2021, is mapping
the effects of chronic opioid exposure in the brain.”
Benefits
Advancements in treatment have turned HIV into a chronic
condition, according to the university. Although those with the
virus can now live longer, HIV may still cause damage, including
to the brain. Up to half of those living with HIV may experience
declines in cognitive function, particularly in working memory
and attention.
“Studies have found that people living with HIV frequently use
cannabis, recreationally or to treat symptoms related to HIV. As
a potentially addictive substance, cannabis also alters the brain,
and people with HIV may be at risk for cannabis use disorder,”
according to Cornell. “Cannabis may also offer benefits for those
living with HIV. It has an anti-inflammatory effect that researchers speculate could tamp down the chronic, harmful inflammation
caused by the virus. Researchers think this inflammation
contributes to the long-term health problems, including cognitive
deficits, that people living with HIV may experience.”
“Findings from our lab and others demonstrate that inflammation
can influence cognition in people living with HIV,” Williams said,
“and we’re aiming to understand whether cannabis can mitigate
those effects and how it does this on a molecular level.”
To examine the interaction between cannabis and HIV, the
research team will focus on several brain regions, including the
hippocampus, where new neurons form, in a process critical to
learning and memory, the university explained. “Using brain
tissue samples collected from human patients after death and from
nonhuman animal models, they intend to look at gene activity and
the mechanisms controlling it within individual cells.”
“It’s unclear how different types of brain cells react to cannabis
in the context of HIV,” Corley said. “New single-cell technologies
will allow us to map these changes at a resolution high enough to
examine the effects on specific cell types.”
The information this project generates could, over the long term,
boost efforts to better prevent and treat HIV-related cognitive
deficits and cannabis use disorder, according to the researchers,
the university made clear.
Relief From Symptoms
When it comes to helping those with HIV, cannabis
appears to be promising.
NIH's National Library of Medicine pointed out that “Although
no comprehensive surveys have been conducted on medical
marijuana users in the United States, small-scale polls indicate
that most are seeking relief from symptoms of AIDS. For
example, each of the three California cannabis buyers' clubs —
organizations that provide marijuana to patients — visited by
the IOM team reported that more than 60% of their members
requested the drug for AIDS treatment.”
Age is often cited as the reason why such a large proportion of
medical marijuana users in the United States are people with
AIDS (this is not the case elsewhere; in Great Britain, for example,
multiple sclerosis appears to predominate among medical
marijuana users).
Because HIV has disproportionately infected members of a
generation that grew up experimenting with marijuana, so the
theory goes, AIDS patients tend to be comparatively willing to
use it as a medicine. By contrast, cancer patients, who are on
average older and thus less likely to have tried marijuana, are far
less inclined to seek it out. If this reasoning is correct, increasing
numbers of cancer patients should turn to medical marijuana as
the baby boom generation ages.
“Because HIV attacks the immune system, it wreaks havoc
throughout the body,” NIH reported. “Besides providing a
foothold for opportunistic infection and cancer, the virus also
triggers a potentially lethal wasting syndrome, painful nerve
damage, and dementia. Finally, in addition to the physical
discomforts inflicted by HIV, many people with AIDS also
struggle with depression and anxiety. Marijuana, some patients
say, eases all of these problems and more.”