Cannabinoid receptor CB1 prevents the development of senile dementia
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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The cannabinoid CB1 receptor helps neurons to withstand inflammatory processes and age-related changes in the brain, leading to the death of nerve cells.
Our brain grows old with the body, and the death of nerve cells eventually leads to what is called senile dementia (or, more commonly, senile dementia) in medicine. Factors determining the rate of aging of the brain, in many ways remain a mystery, although the most common reasons that accelerate the degeneration of nervous tissue can be called: these are stresses, the accumulation of toxic substances, inflammatory processes that increase with age. On the other hand, the human body has a set of tools that help protect the nervous tissue from too fast dying or even heal the damage.
Researchers from the universities of Bonn and Mainz (both of Germany) report that a rather peculiar protein molecule, the cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1), can act as the protector of the brain.
This receptor exists, naturally, not only for the binding of tetrahydrocannabinol; in the brain itself there is a system of endocannabinoid switches (such as anandamide) of neural signals that bind just to CB1 on the surface of neurons. As it turned out, switching off this receptor leads to an accelerated aging of the brain.
The researchers conducted experiments with males of different age, some of them very young, six weeks old, others were in a five-month (that is, middle) age, and still others were one-year-old "old men". The mice were run into a water maze, where they had to find a platform to climb. When the guards memorized the location of the coveted site, it was moved, and the animals had to look for it again.
As scientists in PNAS write, mice that did not have a cannabinoid receptor found it difficult to find a saving island, revealing a deterioration in memory and learning abilities. In such animals, there was an increased mortality of neurons in the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for "accumulating" memory. The absence of operating cannabinoid receptors increased inflammatory risks in the brain and death of neurons from inflammation, whereas the presence of these receptors provided resistance to inflammatory processes from accessory glial cells.
Without receptors, the brain of mice grew older more quickly and carried, not as an example, greater neuronal losses than the brain of normal animals. Most likely, the entire system of endocannabinoids responds to the maintenance of the brain in good health, and the CB1 receptor is only a part of it. Scientists have yet to find out exactly how this system prevents the death of nerve cells; in any case, while they refrain from the recommendations to use more marijuana when they reach old age.
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