The University of Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry will conduct an international study to investigate whether cannabis-based medicine can treat psychosis.

The study was funded by the charitable foundation with £16.5 million ($19.8 million). Welcome. It will include 35 centres, mostly in Europe and North America, and around 1,000 participants – including those at ‘clinically high risk of psychosis’. reported The guard.

Oxford professor Philip McGuire directs the process.

“Cannabidiol is one of the most promising new treatments for people with psychosis,” McGuire said. “Lots of people with psychosis are willing to try cannabidiol and previous smaller studies have shown that it has positive effects.”

The Stratification and Treatment Program for Early Psychosis (STEP). will also investigate “whether cannabidiol can prevent the onset of psychosis in people at high risk of developing it,” McGuire said.

Antipsychotics are used to treat psychosis but have significant side effects, Lynsey Bilslandthe head of the translation department for mental health at Wellcome, explained.

“Patients often stop taking them and they don’t work for everyone,” she said. “So it’s important that we explore avenues like this for new therapies.”

Researchers will also identify biomarkers that indicate a patient may be responding well to treatment.

“This will allow for more personalization of treatment in the future,” concluded Bilsland.

Jazz Pharmaceuticals PLC JAZZ, the company behind the CBD-based drug Epidiolex, provided the CBD for the study free of charge. Epidyolex will be the form of cannabidiol used in the study won its approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2018 and 2020 as the first therapy with an active ingredient derived from cannabis.

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