Two cannabinoids have opposing effects on SARS-CoV-2 in culture

Don't try this at home. It's seriously. We mean it.

Researchers have tested a wide range of drugs to see if they block the virus. Most of the tests didn't end up going anywhere, and even the few drugs that did work required high concentrations that would be hard to achieve inside human cells. ivermectin and chloroquine took off with the public despite iffy evidence for effectiveness, seemingly causing nearly as many problems as they would have solved if they actually worked.

Word of another drug experiment caused a bit of a stir, as the drug in question was a cannabinoid. The full data has been peer reviewed and it looks better than you might think. The effect is small, it hasn't been tested in patients, the quality assurance of commercial cannabidiol products is almost non-existent, and another cannabinoid blocks the effect entirely.

The next step is to the data.

Why test cannabinoids?

The focus of the drug testing was to look for chemicals that were already approved for use in humans, which would simplify their use as treatments for a separate disorder since all the safety data should be available already. Cannabidiol is approved for use in people with seizure disorders.

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The researchers behind the new work started with lung cancer cells that are capable of producing the SARS-coV-2 virulence factor, and then dumped both the virus andCBD on the cells. And it worked. The reproduction of the virus was greatly reduced by non-toxic doses. The team confirmed the result in other lung cell lines. A range of additional cannabinoids did not have the same effect as the partly metabolized derivative.

This is one of the drawbacks. The most potent mind-altering substance in cannabis did not have an effect on its own. When it was given at the same time as CBD, it reversed the inhibition of viral growth. Trying to use cannabis for protection will fail.

This is where the work starts to move beyond the hundreds of similar studies that have been done: the researchers do their best to figure out howCBD works. They checked if it stopped human cells from producing the virus's virulence factor, but it wasn't the cause. They confirmed that the viruses could still get inside the cells.

Not much happens once the virus gets inside. It takes a long time for spikes to be made in cells that have been treated withCBD, and levels stay low for up to 15 hours.