The Role of SAtivex® in Robotic-Rehabilitation

In the researchers' words

Spasticity is frequently experienced by people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), negatively impacting on patient's motor functional outcome, including walking. Currently, none of the available MS disease-modifying medications has been shown to stop or reverse gait disability. Recently the nabiximols has been tested for the treatment of spasticity and walking impairment in MS. Nabiximols (trade name Sativex®) is an oromucosal spray formulation containing 1:1 fixed ratio of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) derived from cloned Cannabis sativa L. plant. The main active substance, THC, acts as a partial agonist at human cannabinoid receptors (CB1 and CB2), and may modulate the effects of excitatory (glutamate-GLU-) and inhibitory (gamma-aminobutyric acid -GABA-) neurotransmitters, leading to muscle relaxation, which in turn is responsible for spasticity improvement. Cannabinoid receptors may modulate both excitatory and inhibitory transmission at central synapses, and have been heavily implicated, in animal models, in multiple forms of synaptic plasticity, such as long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD). Indeed, in a previous study implying transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) technique, it has been hypothesized that the activation of cannabinoid receptors by Sativex® could modulate the balance between LTP and LTD like plasticity by…