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Late-Stage Dementia: Not A Hopeless Case, If You Medicate With Marijuana
Late-stage dementia refers to the end or final stage of cognitive decline associated with dementia.
During this stage, patients go through severe memory loss and significant impairment of cognitive function, which affects communication and language abilities, memory, judgment, and reasoning. Patients in late-stage dementia are typically disoriented, impaired, and incontinent – thus, are completely dependent on their caregivers. Physically, the body goes through extreme weight loss and is much more prone to infections and bedsores among other symptoms.
Unfortunately, once one has reached the final stage of dementia, there is no known cure. Caregiving or management is typically focused on improving ones’ quality of life instead of treating the condition.
However, it seems that cannabis might be able to help.
The Case For Using CBD
A 2023 study from Greece involved researchers administering a CBD tincture on dementia patients revealed some incredible results. The findings, which were published in the medical journal, Clinical Gerontologist, found the administration of 3% CBD tinctures to be safe and effective for treating both psychological and behavioral symptoms associated with dementia.
A group of 20 patients were involved; 10 of them were given CBD for a period of 6 months and the other half underwent conventional dementia treatment. “The follow-up assessment… showed significant improvement of BPSD [behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia] in all our patients who received CBD, and no or limited improvement in the second group, regardless of the underlying neuropathology of dementia,” they said.
“We suggest that CBD may be a more effective and safe choice for managing BPSD than the typical intervention,” the investigators concluded. “Healthcare professionals should consider incorporating it into their practices to reduce BPSD in PwD [people with dementia]… Future large and randomized clinical trials are needed to reassure these findings,” they said.
Another study from 2022 found positive results from using CBD extracts, but this time for reducing agitation caused by dementia. Agitation as well as aggression are some of the more distressing symptoms of dementia, which can manifest in different ways including physical violence, verbal outbursts, pacing, and restlessness. While there is no one standard cure for it, it’s believed that this behavior can be caused by the progressive brain cell damage associated with dementia, which makes it difficult for patients to understand and interpret their environment.
The study from Israel involved researchers administering plant-based CBD extracts with a 30:1 ration of CBD to THC on a cohort of senior dementia patients with a mean age of 79.
“Patients in the investigational group experienced a significantly greater reduction in sleep disturbances, and in agitation and aggression sub-score using two different measurement tools. The improvements were accompanied with non-serious side effects,” said the authors. “We recommend conducting a large scale randomized controlled trial on behavioral disturbances related to dementia and to compare clinical sub-types of dementia,” they reported.
THC Studies
Meanwhile, there have been other studies that have found success in treating the symptoms of dementia with THC. In 2023, a case study conducted by researchers from the Tulane University School of Medicine together with investigators at the University of Texas discussed the findings of using a high-THC tincture on an 85-year old patient with dementia.
The participant’s dementia symptoms gradually became worse over time, and wasn’t responding to medications. However, after administering the THC medicine, they found that the “patient’s behavior rapidly improved” and the marked benefits were so significant that the patient was discharged from a treatment facility to home care.
The Need For More Studies
Researchers from the University of Kentucky started a clinical trial analyzing the impact of medical cannabis on patients who were already in late-stage dementia. According to Greg Jicha, MD, Ph.D., a neurologist as well as the director of clinical trials at the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging in the United Kingdom: “The idea really came on the basis of a patient whose name was Libby, and she was cared for by a friend and colleague nationally.” According to Jicha, there is a great need to develop other treatments for late-stage dementia, and there is a potential seen in medical marijuana.
“We have very few medicines used to provide comfort in the later stages of dementia. While the field is largely focused on finding ways to prevent or potentially slow or stop the disease in its early stages, we’ve forgotten about those later-stage patients that aren’t eligible for those types of treatments,” explains Jicha. He also adds that much more research and participants are needed.
“It has been available, and we have been enrolling folks in this study who are in the late stages of disease since June, but we need hundreds or more nationally to fill that trial to get the medical data that we need to potentially, in the future, get dementia on the list of conditions that are eligible for medical marijuana,” said Jicha. Furthermore, he explains that the current available treatments are only sedatives, but he thinks there are other ways this can be managed.
“Our ultimate goal is not sedate and render unconscious these patients so that they feel nothing but rather provide them comfort and relief that allows them to engage in their final years of life,” said Jicha.
CONCLUSION
While there are many studies showing potential and promise for using various compounds in cannabis for the treatment of dementia, research is still limited and most studies feature small sample sizes. That said, cannabis has certainly proven to be safe so far, but families of the affected patients are encouraged to seek consultations with medical professionals before using cannabis as a treatment option for dementia.