Thanks to the support of Fundación Alicia Koplowitz, Universitat de València has launched a research to find out the influence of the cannabis use during adolescence in the development of schizophrenia. The cell biology department has got a funding of 50,000 Euros in the current call, which is devoted to research in child and adolescent psychiatry. This amoung will enable the ‘analysis of an experimental treatment through the administration of cannabinoid receptor antagonists that could limit the side effects on neurons’, explains the project’s head, researcher Juan Nácher.
Schizophrenia is a complex disease influenced both by genetic factors and by disorders in the nervous system development and adverse environments during the adolescence. Several studies have proved the existence of a link between cannabis use during adolescence and the risk to develop schizophrenia. The first outbreaks of schizophrenia are seen in the late teens and early twenties.
For this reason, the main goal of the project headed by Juan Nácher is to ‘assess the effects of this use on the structure and function of the cerebral cortex, especially on the inhibitory neurons’, the researcher explains. In order to develop the project, a double-impact animal model of this disease will be used, which combines a disruption of the nervous system development and an environmental action during adolescence.
Nácher points out that the model reproduces some of the main symptoms of schizophrenia and is a useful tool for its experimental study. The assessment of the cannabis use side effects during adolescence will be developed throught the administration of THC –tetrahidrocannabinol- during puberty, the main psychoactive substance of cannabis. ‘Animals will have some behavioural tests and the structure of the inhibitory neuronal networks will be assessed when they become adults. In order to find out if the side effects of THC administration can be reversed or prevented, a group of animals will be treated with an antagonist of the cannabinoid receptor, a molecule blocking the union of THC to its receptor’, the researcher explains.
This study, which will be carried out during two years, tries to analyze the real impact of cannabis use on the teenagers brain and find out if it aggravate the adverse effects produced by schizophrenia. It this premise is proved, then ‘we would like to see if the treatment with CB1 antagonists is an alternative therapy to lessen schizophrenia’s symptoms, though partly’, concludes Nácher.
Throughout the last six years, the cell biology department at Universitat de València has developed some researches funded by the Science Ministry and by private foundations about the neurobiological base of schizophrenia. The Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness has just given it a research grant. Currently, the department’s members take part in a European multilateral project on this topic. This laboratory studies the change capability of neurons and their connections in the adult brain, neuronal plasticity and how some of these changes may be behind some of the symptoms of diseases like schizophrenia and depression.
Last update: 26 de september de 2012 13:41.
News release
