Harvard Medical School
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
SPEAKER
SCIENCE
Despite the widespread use of medical cannabis (MC) for a range of conditions and indications, very little data has examined the longitudinal impact of MC on clinical and cognitive measures, and virtually no studies thus far have explored the specific impact of actual cannabinoid constituents on these measures over time. We recently analyzed a cohort of medical cannabis patients in order to assess potential change in clinical and cognitive function over time, and used quantitative information regarding actual cannabis use to explore the specific relationship between individual cannabis constituents (e.g., THC, CBD) and outcome measures. Data suggest that relative to baseline, MC patients demonstrate significant improvement on a number of clinical and cognitive measures over time. Interestingly, statistically significant relationships were detected between individual cannabinoids and clinical outcome measures. Findings underscore the importance of assessing patients using MC over time and suggest potentially discrete roles for cannabinoids which are likely to impact clinical trial designs and product development.
Dr. Staci Gruber is the Director of the Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Core at McLean Hospital’s Brain Imaging Center and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gruber’s research focuses on the application of neurocognitive models and brain imaging to characterize risk factors for substance abuse and psychiatric conditions. She has been studying the impact of recreational cannabis use on the brain for over two decades using neurocognitive, clinical assessments, and multimodal brain imaging techniques. Her work has been published in numerous peer reviewed journals and has been the basis for national and international symposia, documentaries, and news stories, which ultimately helped to inform public policy.
Given the many inherent differences between recreational and medical cannabis users, Dr. Gruber launched Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND) in 2014, the first ever program of its kind designed to clarify the specific effects of medical cannabis use. MIND supports numerous projects that aim to address the impact of medical cannabis on a number of important variables including cognition, brain structure and function, clinical state, quality of life, pain, sleep, and other health-related measures. As director of MIND, Dr. Gruber has generated major contributions to the field as the first to assess medical cannabis patients longitudinally, first to acquire neuroimaging data in medical cannabis patients, and as Principal Investigator of the first clinical trial of a full-spectrum, high-cannabidiol (CBD) product, which she specifically formulated to treat anxiety. Additional, novel clinical trials have been approved and are pending or currently underway.
Dr. Gruber also launched the Women’s Health Initiative at MIND, or WHIM, the first cannabis-focused program designed specifically to address women’s health and disorders that disproportionately affect women as well as some transgender and non-binary individuals.
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