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Israeli doctors give CBD to serious COVID-19 patients, get positive results

Israeli doctors give CBD to serious COVID-19 patients, get positive results

The majority of seriously ill COVID-19 patients given CBD to calm inflammation were released from the hospital in under a month, in a trial conducted recently at an Israeli hospital.

The initial findings, stated an announcement by Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikvah, Israel, indicate that CBD “has a positive impact on a number of inflammatory markers that occur with Corona patients.”

A cytokine storm, the body’s overreaction to infection, contributes to the mortality of COVID-19 patients, the announcement explained. This study was meant to test the efficacy and safety of CBD in reducing that “turbulent inflammatory process.”

The cannabinoids in cannabis can modulate the body’s immune responses through their interaction with the endocannabinoid system.

Of the 11 patients in the trial, eight were released from hospital within 7-30 days, though the other three participants died from COVID-19 complications. 

The researchers, Dr. Moshe Yeshurun, the head of the bone marrow transplant unit at the facility, along with Dr. Ilia Kagan, the head of the respiratory intensive care unit, cautioned that the small number of participants precluded them from “drawing firm conclusions about the effect of CBD on the course of the disease.” 

The results do, however, justify further research including larger numbers of patients and a control group in order to better assess patient outcomes.

Previous research by Dr. Yeshurun showed that “cannabidiol significantly reduces infectious disease in patients who went through a bone marrow transplant,” the hospital’s announcement stated.

covid ward israeli hospital
Israeli medical staff attend to a patient in a coronavirus ward. (Gil Cohen Magen/Shutterstock)

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News this week, Dr. Kagan stated that, “to our surprise, after the treatment the condition of some of the seriously ill patients improved and their decline halted — though we cannot determine unequivocally if the improvement was solely due to the cannabis.”

He added that they now intend to recruit more patients for the next phase of the study to gather evidence that could bolster those conclusions.

In April 2020, not long after COVID-19 became a global pandemic, a number of Israeli research labs launched studies to examine the use of cannabis-derived treatments in treating the symptoms of the disease. 

Some of those studies didn’t progress but others have been progressing.

One of those projects included using inhaled CBD-loaded exosomes collaboration to gauge if the cannabinoid can help in the recovery of infected lung cells. Other studies included a trial examining the efficacy of a CBD-steroids combination in fighting COVID-19 and one meant to gauge if the anti-inflammatory properties of cannabis could slow down lung infections caused by COVID-19.

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