Smoking Cannabis 'Can Cause Brain Damage in Unborn Children'

May 28, 01:30 PM

Current Headlines: By GRAEME SMITH

SCOTTISH scientists who have achieved a major breakthrough in the understanding of how the brain develops are warning that smoking cannabis during pregnancy could affect the unborn child.

They have found that naturally produced cannabinoids play a key role in the development of a baby's brain and fear that smoking cannabis could upset the delicate balance and cause brain damage.

Dr Ann Rajnicek and Dr Ruth Ross are part of an international team of neuroscientists who have published the paper Hardwiring the Brain: How Endocannabinoids Shape Neuronal Connectivity in the journal Science.

They are led by Dr Tibor Harkany, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who is soon to take up a position at Aberdeen University's Institute of Medical Science.

The discovery centres on naturally occurring molecules in the body called endogenous cannabinoids, which act in the same way as cannabis does in our bodies by attaching to the same targets or receptors on the surface of nerve cells.

The researchers have found that once these molecules - or endocannabinoids - have attached or bound with their target receptors the resulting signals help to guide the growth of nerve cells in the embryonic brain.

"This is a crucial process because the brain is like a complex electrical circuit in which nerve cells need to be hardwired correctly, " said Dr Ross, senior lecturer in neuropharmacology at the university's Institute of Medical Sciences.

"Because we have shown cannabinoids interact and are very important in the development of the brain the implication is that smoking cannabis during pregnancy could disrupt that natural process.

"During development they will be produced at the right place at the right time in the natural process but if you flood the whole system with cannabis you are going to disrupt that.

"It could mean the cannabis is being produced at the wrong place at the wrong time and the whole natural system is altered by the cannabis.

"Here at the University of Aberdeen we are discovering that these molecules are important in many processes in the body including bone development, pain processing and appetite. Ultimately we hope our understanding of these molecules will lead to the development of new drugs for the treatment of a wide range of key diseases."

Professor Colin McCaig, head of the university's School of Medical Sciences, added: "This is exciting and highly novel work that will be of major interest internationally. It continues and extends the University of Aberdeen's reputation as a world-leading centre for biomedical studies on cannabinoids."

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