Cannabidiol inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication through induction of host ER stress
science.org
science.org
I need to not catch COVID-19 for around five weeks. My wife is due to give birth, and if I'm COVID positive I can't be with her in the hospital. If she catches COVID, that's also a really bad situation. So naturally, I'm pretty desperate for any shred of hope or control. Reading this, my instinct is to walk over to the nearest dispensary and buy a lot of CBD.
But this study is very preliminary. It's early. This could have been a fluke of the data. There could be effects not being correctly measured.
And so I have to have this great internal debate: "There's nothing unsafe about this; I have no issues with using CBD; this might help; I've got nothing else I can really do other than lock myself up at home, which I'm doing". Vs "The science isn't there; I'm already triple vaccinated; and the very act of leaving home to go buy CBD is an exposure risk".
I'd suggest doing some research on it at least. If it sounds like something you might benefit from, it's not terribly expensive to buy enough to last you 5 weeks.
I recommend creating your own tinctures with MCT oil.
Usually suppliers give at least percentages for the CBD content and I bet you can get numbers for the rest if you ask. It makes dosing far more consistent
OTC nasal sprays have been used for years by dentists and others, but like everything else these days, are contested, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29620297
If one is concerned about possibly-false positives in a test, there may be value in OTC nasal treatments.
> The Response we filed also includes a new in vitro study done at Utah State University’s Institute for Antiviral Research. This new in vitro study found that the components in Xlear were significantly more effective antivirals against the Delta strain of COVID-19 than Remdesivir, the Government-approved antiviral medicine. Ironically, the Government alleges it is Xlear that has misled the public.
//sarcasm// But for treating covid that idea is preposterous.
> Sterile water, which is free of bacteria and viruses, is recommended for use in neti pots. Tap water can be used only if it has been passed through a special filter or boiled for three to five minutes, then left to cool until lukewarm. Most bottled “spring” water is not considered sterile, so it should not be used unless it is boiled first.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/careful-use-neti-...
Google searching for info puts all kinds of low quality results at the top, so I'll share video link of Bret Weinstein having 2 hour long conversation with 2 researchers who dove into the vitamin D studies, so you can hear their conclusions, actually here's a 17 minute clip - https://youtu.be/_xfzsEc0CTo - where first 5+ minutes gives good overview to begin, with YouTube and Spotify links to full version in clip description.
At the risk of offering un-asked for advice, I have no problem settling that debate! I think we share similar enough opinions regarding the underlying things that our conclusions would align.
I'd attack it by using numbers. :D Measure the possible gain and possible loss for each choice, and choose the one with the EV or probability distribution you prefer, given your risk transfer function.
You can get (approximate, but better than ex-recto!) hard numbers for the approximate risk of contracting COVID under a variety of changing variables. Shoutout to microcovid.org. For instance, I used their calculator to estimate the risk of a 3x vaccinated, KN95 mask wearing person such as myself, in my area, to have a 5 minute long (does it really take that long?) indoor shopping trip where I would be ~3 feet apart from anyone, with ~2 people in the room. Provided the other person's masked, and assuming there's no talking (which is a fib, but more close to reality than assuming it's 5 minutes of active conversation), I get ~13 microcovids. If I change that to assuming talking for 5 minutes, ~64 microcovids.
To provide scale for the units, if you "spend" 200 microcovids per week, it works out to 1% covid/year.
Given that, it feels easy to pop the balloon that the risk from going to the store outweighs the tiny statistical benefit of doing so. And if you really wanna pop that balloon, simply have a someone do it for you, and meet outside. 1 minute, being 3 feet away from a average unmasked person in my area, while outdoors, is then ~1.3 microcovids. :)
yay numbers.
This lines up with my understanding that it's endemic, and at a high level of prevalence in the population (in my area of the US). This also lines up with my understanding that the majority carrying it are asymptomatic, and that among the symptomatic, only the unvaxed or immunocompromised get sick enough for it to be the primary cause of hospitalization. Hence, significant danger only exists for the unvaxed or immunocompromised.
The website is helping you think about the risk through approximating the probability of getting SARS-CoV-2. For me, I've accepted that P ~= 1.
What it's not telling you is the probability that when you contract SARS-CoV-2, you'll regret it, or even know that it happened.
The OP is in a completely different situation though. Vaccines aren't approved for a newborn (tho, there's promising indications that pregnant mothers who are vaccinated pass some benefits to the child!), and putting that aside, for OP, contracting even asymptomatic COVID could mean missing the birth, which I'm guessing has a cost approaching -infinity.
Your internal dilemma seems self imposed. Even if it provides you a placebo effect, so what? And, look, triple vaccinated doesn’t mean much as it relates to catching or transmission of omnicron. Clearly it will protect you from dying but I know dozens of triple vaccinated people that had covid over the past couple weeks. You seem to understand this, which is why you are even considering the CBD. So order it online. Literally no reason not to if it will give you peace of mind.
Ie a false sense of security
Ie,there's an easy path here to reduce your likely risk by applying this potential mitigation without changing anything else. The fact that there are people too dumb to take this option (which I agree with you about) has no bearing on an individual's decision to do so.
I wish you and your soon to be increased family all the best.
People keep saying "Isn't it exciting?". I say "Yeah, like when you're being slowly pulled up to the top of the roller coaster hill. Exciting. Very exciting."
Guess we all were getting hot and frisky last May / June after getting vaccinated.
Wish you guys all the best, I'm playing the same nervous waiting game.
Personally, I don't enjoy the feelings of THC, but CBD seems to work more like medicine in my case. It calms me down and I don't feel impaired. It's sort of like the feeling of l-theanine in green tea.
What do you have to lose by trying some? Anecdotally, I've found that "full spectrum" CBD works better.
There's a term bantered about of "gang effect" where each of the cannabinoids working together as a whole is much more effective than isolated cannabinoids like CBD,CBG,CBN,etc. We're just so far behind on research on what this plant can do for us because of the past century's stigmatization. So many many more studies will need to be done on each of the individual cannabinoids to see if the full spectrum effect is real. It wasn't until the 1990s before we recognized that there is an endocnnabinoid system[0] in our bodies.
We have a small amount of papers that shows this has potential, let's wait and see... one (or a few papers) does not mean it's totally accurate.
Let's let other studies come out and see what they come up with.
One study may not capture the entire picture and there could be more issues which these initital studies don't capture.
Also initial studies could have testing errors which get uncovered in future studys with different P.I.'s and experiemental setups.
I don't understand why people apply this logic to CBD but not experimental mRNA vaccines, and subsenquently why the FDA is fighting a FOIA request to release it's data claiming it will take 75 years to release.
So now other researchers can't verify it.
This is the opposite of science.
mRNA technology is not new, it's been worked on for years and years. We were slated to get it around 2030 or 2040, we're just getting the advancement a bit earlier than the normal timeline. Sometimes discoveries happen earlier than they "ought" to, my fav example before mRNA was the video camera and TV. Invented before stereo radio, IIRC, in the late 20s.
DARPA started injecting money into the field in 2013, and that's after it had been studied as "the next big thing in medicine" for some time. I worked as a programmer in a lab 10 years ago and "mRNA tech" was talked about the way us computer people talk about photonics, for example. The only reason the vaccine was ready so darn fast was because of the years of prior work on mRNA technology generally, combined with the fact that The Science Community (tm) had already spent years, money, and hundreds of graduate students (I imagine) specifically on stabilizing the spike protein following the SARS outbreak in 2003.
When the new one came along, I think we'd be in a different situation (dead. I think we'd be much more dead.) if there hadn't been prior research into how to stabilize that protein in just the right shape, or if there wasn't a decade of for-profit startup research behind it and even more public university research, for decades (plural).
Oh, and also, I think your criticism of the FDA is spot on, I think and hope they lose the case in court. I just think it has nothing to do with anything else, it's just government bureaucracy being stupid, sometimes they need a FOIA request and a lawsuit to stop that crap.
It'll probably be disproven in some followup paper, or the results will be insignificant, or something like that, but I don't care. It's "true enough" to sooth the soul, and another indication that the universe might have a sense of humor. :)
Now, back to enjoying all the wine, hash, and hot chicks.
Nitpick: As much as I agree that some people are as you describe, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking everyone in favour of therapeutics are also "anti vax". Vaccinations and therapeutics can live side by side as vectors of attack for certain illnesses.
I've caught my self falling into this trap my self recently. It's hard not to knee-jerk react when someone mentions something like ivermectin and then make wild generalisations on that persons political opinions, mental ability and then judge them as a person.
I agree it's important not to, but playing devil's advocate, has that specific generalization ever been wrong, for anyone? Genuine question.
I'm thankful for the vaccine, it's saved a lot of lives, especially of those at high risk. I don't think it should be mandated and I certainly don't think it should be given to children. I think we should be investing as much into early treatment as we are into vaccines. We certainly shouldn't be limiting access to things that have been proven to work, like monoclonal anti-bodies. I think things like Ivermectin should be investigated for use. I don't think we should be calling it "horse dewormer" when it's an FDA-approved medication with billions of doses distributed worldwide. And while we shouldn't be promoting anything that isn't proven, we shouldn't be sanctioning physicians for prescribing a safe drug off-label.
In short: yes, the opposite side of the political spectrum is more diverse than you're currently accounting for. Lumping "the other" into a single category is natural and well described by Social Identity Theory [1], but not helpful to discussions like this.
Hear hear! More of this. I am nearly all of these things. I'm staunchly pro "let's quit lumping concepts and people into an absurdly small number of categories". And staunchly against "everyone who believes X, Y and Z must ALSO believe Q R S T U... or you're out".
Sure, I agree with that, and neither of those were in the quote I responded to, which is why I asked about "that specific generalization".
Is there anyone taking Ivermectin that also isn't anti-vaccine, right of center politically, and don't know that the risks with vaccines are also the risks of covid itself, only lower with vaccines?
I'm asking because here I think the issue is deeper than the generalizations, in that politics has engulfed views (science/anti-science) that shouldn't be political to begin with.
1) took ivermectin prophylactically when the vaccine wasn't available, and also got the vaccine when it was.
2) are now vaccinated and have ivermectin on standby in case they test positive.
I know nobody who is currently unvaccinated and still taking ivermectin as prophylactic
Of course, this doesn't mean it works. We are doing the trials specifically because we don't know if it works or not, but reasonably believe that it could
I'm vaccinated and would consider taking Ivermectin/Fluvoxamine if I become infected and detect it early enough.
I also make sure to supplement with Vit D/Vit C/Zinc pre-emptively even though these are vaguely associated with "antivaxxer" now.
Firstly a heartfelt thanks for your reply, I appreciate it when people say helpful things like this.
But to nitpick on your nitpick, I am just as aggressively pro therapeutics as I am pro vaccine. I completely agree re: "Vaccinations and therapeutics can live side by side as vectors of attack for certain illnesses". The more weapons we have against diseases, the better. I'm comfortable and cozy with my 3x shots, AND was quite hyped when Paxlovid got approved.
To be specific, the intended target of my light derision isn't anyone pro-therapeutics. Just those pro-bunk-therapeutics. Like my mother, who for some reason went through a phase insisting one could be healed sometimes with quartz crystals. (poking fun at myself or my family seems safe).
I never did deep research into the topic, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought hydroxychloroquine was quite securely in the "not a chance, there have been tons of studies, it's 100% bunk" category? (as far as being a treatment for COVID-19)
Again, pro-therapeutics! Really, pro-anything-science-technological-advancement. Was an early Regen-Cov (the name of Regeneron's med) cheerleader too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/health/coronavirus-hydrox...
Co-incidentally the FDA is fighting an FOIA request to release the data they used to approve the vaccines saying it will take 75 years.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/paramount-importanc...
We think that's probably placebo (seems like a reasonable assumption at least) but the people it's helped are going to be devout believers. Experience is a powerful motivator
EDIT: (added all this word soup)
In my non-scientific opinion, which is purely anecdotal, a while ago, back when ivermectin was a thing, there's was high overlap between the people excited about it and those with no grasp of common sense, let alone science. To my eyes, the same people were afraid of bill gates microchipping them and evil Jewish space lasers. This is my first hand lived experience.
> What an ignorant and stupid-ass thing to say, and the only reason for saying it is a consumption of crap from mainstream media outlet.
That response sucks -- you can do better. I'll help you, I'm pro-science and pro-discourse.
Instead of offering your own guess as to what motivates my thoughts (which is both incorrect, and makes you look dumb, lol), what you want to do instead say something appealing to reason, with content. Something like:
"I don't think you should lump ivermectin in with those injecting bleach. Though ridiculed by many, there's some reason to suspect it may be useful. For example, did you know that there was $STUDY and $STUDY that showed $INTERESTING_RESULT, published in $RESPECTED_JOURNAL?"
But then you'd have to find values for those variables, and good luck with that.
Much of the misinformation on ivermectin draws on sparse low-quality studies, including studies that were later retracted and one that was rife with fraud. One of the key studies (to the ivermectin delusion) not only has blatant plagiarism, but also "they had reported the study as starting on the eighth of June. And they included a number of patients who had died before that date". :P Once you catch something like that, are you gonna still believe the study? Which, by the way, was never actually published in a peer reviewed journal, just posted as a preprint!
Source: https://www.sideeffectspublicmedia.org/coronavirus/2021-12-0...
Notice how I was able to back up my central assertion "ivermectin people are believing in nonsense" with a motivating *actual reason* "the papers they are basing their opinions on are of low quality, unpublished, non-peer reviewed, and below any sensible standard of quality" and that I can even *cite a source*?
Do that instead of what you did. :)
Also, I can't help but laugh at the notion of "mainstream media" as an insult. :D Like, "Oh, I don't trust those fools at the BBC, or the Reuters cabal. I get all MY facts exclusively from my neighbor Bob and his facebook group."
So if you have intestinal worms, the data supports that idea that ivermectin helps with covid infections, also. If you don't have worms it doesn't.
Maybe this is too nuanced for the mainstream media.
[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
Heh, wow you're so clever with your "laugh". It's not like the CEO of Reuters is also on the Pfizer board of directors ... oh wait ... that's exactly the case.
https://www.pfizer.com/people/leadership/board_of_directors/...
It is far too soon for any one side to go all in on a conclusion.
I had no idea NIH was doing a 15k patient study before reading your comment! If I had, I would have mentioned it explicitly when writing my above comment, and never lumped it in with bleach drinkers and flat earthers.
I was wrong! thanks for the info!
My (previous!) perception that it's bunk science was rooted in the story of its origin.
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/ivermectin-misinforma...
After reading that, I dug into the sources they cite. Then the sources they cited. The whole thing STINKS! (which I know is not an objective scientific measure) -- and the more familiar you are with academia, the more the narrative of "this stinks like something bad" rings true. You've got plagiarism, a non-peer reviewed preprint with OBVIOUS data fraud being cited and used as a large source in a meta-study, now-retracted papers, and _political motivations of the scientists_... they all reinforce the narrative of "this is BS".
Check out the paper https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1003006/v1 "Ivermectin for COVID-19: addressing potential bias and medical fraud"
Money quote: "These observations demonstrate that the significant effect of ivermectin on survival was dependent on the inclusion of studies with a high risk of bias or potential medical fraud."
ALL THAT BEING SAID, it's undoubtedly true (to me, anyway) that the NIH doesn't do a 15k person study unless there's some scientific merit! So there's gotta be something worth investigating, the process is working, and, today I learned, thanks to you, that it's "not as stupid as bleach".
It just rose to prominence in a quite sketchy way.
As with many scientific topics, the early data was all over the board. There were dozens of studies ranging form fraudulent garbage to honest and very promising. This provided lots of fuel for people and the media to polarize on the topic.
My interpretation is that the primary mechanism can be summed up to a modulatory effect lowering the activation threshold on the IRE1α and interferon pathways for breakdown of viral RNA
I'd like to understand if/how/where CBD may actually be binding/interacting to modulate these pathways
The authors also bring up the issue of CBD forming large micelles and being captured by the liver limiting the amount distributed to other tissues. I'm unsure if the formation of micelles is the issue at hand here, but there are cannabinoids products available while have been sonicated and sprayed into small particles with a surfactant to make them water soluble. This could be an interesting delivery method to achieve greater tissue distribution. I'm not sure how much its been studied (if at all) but my personal anecdote with these products is that they do achieve a high blood plasma concentration very rapidly compared to "normal" edibles in a fatty carrier.
Still, interesting and if confirmed would be a funny twist to the whole legalization epic of the last decades.
Is that from another study? This study notes that "In matched groups of human patients from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative, CBD ... had a significant negative association with positive SARS-CoV-2 tests" (from the abstract)
This is at the bottom of the suspected effective range of concentration, and that's one hell of a lot of CBD to ingest
Very interesting study though, I hope more follow up with replicates and human studies
The natural version of it, is not good enough.
Smoking it was not tested and not advised.
Note: not an expert, i just read the article completely. I hope for high quality CBD oil though, but not sure. I need external advice to be more certain.
"It may not help that much but the downside is well known and small, so it could be worth a try"
Is that a reasonable thought, or is it dangerous misinformation and denial? For both or just one of the drugs?
Anecdata: I was smoking at my usual (high) levels when I got COVID in Feb 2020, i had to cut down for a week or so because my lung capacity suffered, and I got back to the usual consumption after that. I happened to have been weighing and logging daily does at that time so have the record. Perhaps it helped moderate severity, perhaps not.
Anyway, I don't think anyone needs an excuse to get high, lol.
I also heard (this is anecdotal, I don't have sources, do not quote me, etc etc etc) that smoking helps inhibit the rate of contagion, maybe there's a correlation there as well.
What does that have to do with the conversation about CBD which does not get you high?
This makes sense because it is known that intestinal worms can compromise the immune system.
[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
So, no available method for usage, it seems. Anyone with more medical knowledge that can chim in?
Seems useful after infection though.
> while it can lead to more robust synthesis of endocannabinoids, really has nothing to do with the study at hand. Generally we use drugs because they have different or greater degrees of their mechanism than the endogenous compounds.
You can either excite these receptors or not. Exciting the receptor more than needed, which is what these overly high levels of exogenous cannabinols do, leads to degraded receptor sensitivity (dependance) and probably a rebound effect when the drug is stopped. It is not that I feel the drugs do not work, but they are not needed and are lacking the sensitivity.
> Not to mention we don't know if endocannabinoids such as anandamide or 2-AG even have the same effect as high doses of CBD shown in this study. Also the concentrations of the endogenous molecules are likely nowhere near high enough
The arachidonic acid (Omega 6) derivatives (anandamide) are known to not be as anti-inflammatory and is more in line with THC, not CDB, in its action. Which is my point of having to get the 3/6 ratio much higher, and has nothing to do with this study other than showing that we need LESS anandamide and more docosahexaenoyl and eicosapentaenoyl ethanolamides.
If someone has enough omega 3 endocannabinoids it is likely that they would not need the heavy hammer of CBD to get them out of the inflammation. I am not saying CBD does not work, but endocannabinoids are more than just one molecule, and CBD cannot compare.
For a overall robust immune system we should be studying Omega 3's/Omega 6 balance more deeply.
We also don't know the mechanism of CBD preventing infection, this is only a preliminary study which shows that CBD has some effect through some mechanism. CBD's receptor profile has not been fully characterized afaik
You seem to be jumping to an awful lot of conclusions
Therefore my perception is that this hasn't really been covered much at all. I can't recall the early days of Ivermectin coverage to make a comparison.
Most scientific studies like this are springboards for follow-up studies. Don't let the media tell you that a scientific study in isolation is Definite Proof for anything, or that science is that absolute.
Nobody's starting Facebook groups or 'meta analysis' websites with unknown owners to push weed as a corona treatment - unlike ivermectin. There was a group behind pushing that one, I don't know who or why, but there was.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8505406/cannabidiol-covid-19-stud...
Apologies for not linking the study directly, but not entirely sure if I have access to it.
2. N = 42 is .. small.. but see: #1
3. Holy crap that's fascinating results!! Wow! Can't wait to see what happens in a Real study (RCT) with higher N.
4. I'm smirking at the fact that the authors consist of the employees of the company that makes the compound in question, and those with the most to gain. But this in no way diminishes point #3.
5. Where did you hear of this? I'm disappointed in myself that I hadn't seen this, and it's from the middle of last year.
What does "highly effected" mean anyway? The one you linked might be enough to warrant future study, but given the numbers used it's not really statistically significant. I mean, especially when vaccinated, most people will be fine after two weeks at the latest.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/business/covid-pill-treat...
Smoking has many variables that could reduce any efficiency.