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Cannabis holds key to weight control

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

A NEW weight loss drug has been developed as a result of understanding why cannabis stimulates the appetite, scientists report today.

Cannabis users get the "munchies" because of a link between cannabinoids, cannabis-like molecules in the brain, and the mechanisms that regulate weight. Mice engineered to lack "CB1 receptors", sites where cannabinoids act, eat less than normal, say Dr George Kunos and colleagues from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.

The team believes that the body's own cannabinoids may contribute to overeating in the development of obesity. A drug, called SR141716A, that blocks the CB1 receptors also produced a similar result.

"The CB1 receptor antagonist we used in the study [SR141716A], which was developed by the Sanofi company of Montpellier, France, is currently in clinical trial for the treatment of obesity," Dr Kunos reports in Nature.

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