While many people rely on marijuana or CBD for joint pain and better sleep, a recent study indicates that it could affect their standard medications. The impact is likely since the human body processes the products with the same group of enzymes.
Enzymes in our body that metabolizes marijuana THC, CBD and cannabinol might aid in processing and eliminating over 70% of common prescription drugs. As per investigator Philip Lazarus, the aforementioned means that cannabis might dangerously increase certain prescription medications’ effects or make other drugs flush through the system so fast that those lack effects on users. For your information, Lazarus is a pharmaceutical science professor from Washington State University.
Lazarus stated that researchers noticed some major inhibitors. For instance, the concentrations they noticed in the laboratory signal that there is a slight real-time inhibition of those enzymes.
According to the University at Buffalo’s professor Ed Bednarczyk and Lazarus, warfarin, tamoxifen, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen are among the drugs that cannabis could affect. Lazarus worked as a senior author for two laboratory reports featured in the latest edition of the Drug Metabolism and Disposition journal. One study explored a group of enzymes called cytochrome P450s, whereas the other looked at the so-called UDP-glucuronosyltransferases enzyme family.
The early phases of metabolizing tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol include cytochrome P450s, whereas the other enzymes play a part in the metabolism-related stages that come later.
As per the authors, cannabidiol and THC stay in the human body for around half an hour before those enzymes metabolize the cannabinoids. However, they also stated that substances that stem from the metabolism process could linger in the body for as many as two weeks.
In the laboratory, the researchers checked how the cannabis chemicals are likely to interfere with those enzymes’ capability to metabolize other drugs, with kidney cells for enzyme tests.
The investigators discovered that the main tetrahydrocannabinol metabolites inhibited important CYP enzymes, which include many that play big parts in our liver. Further, the said three marijuana cannabinoids, particularly cannabidiol, inhibited two main UGT enzymes present in the human liver.
It was also discovered that cannabidiol blocked three enzymes causing around 95% of UDP-glucuronosyltransferase metabolism in our kidney, helping to clear some drugs and toxins out of the body.
As for Bednarczyk, pharmacists and physicians who work with patients should explore these interactions. It is worth noting that these pieces of information do not concern cannabis or CBD side effects but rather drug-drug interactions.