Marijuana may fight Alzheimer’s

People who spent the 1960s and ‘70s in a haze could find themselves surprisingly lucid in old age: the marijuana they smoked may help protect against Alzheimer’s disease, a new study found.

Anti-inflammatory compounds in pot deflect the memory loss associated with the illness and could ultimately slow its progression, said psychology Prof. Gary Wenk of Ohio State University.

Wenk gave old rats – who, like humans, tend to get lost as they age – a synthetic form of marijuana. The ones given the drug found their way through a maze more easily.

“That’s not going to cure Alzheimer’s disease, but it’s going to help a lot because by reducing inflammation we’re going to rescue some neurons – we’re going to help you not decay so fast,” said Wenk, who presented his findings Wednesday at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Atlanta.

But scientists still need to find a compound that reduces brain inflammation without triggering a high, said Wenk, whose research is funded by the federal government, which has long criminalized marijuana.

“You can’t add a high onto a dementia. You’re just going to make the person more impaired,” he said.

The drug was effective in older rats with modest memory impairments, but it’s not yet clear when humans would most benefit from taking a nonpsychoactive form of it.

“There’s this fear as the baby boomers get older that there’s going to be more and more people with Alzheimer’s,” Wenk said.

“It may be we’re surprised by the fact that this illicit compound used decades ago might alter how many people get diagnosed.”