CBDA and CBGA have the potential to help in the fight against SARS-CoV-2

Dear cread readers. Even we at cread and cbuy.ch can’t avoid talking about the COVID-19 pandemic that has been going on for more than 2 years. Fortunately, today we can share with you some cautiously optimistic news. North American scientists published the first study on the efficacy of cannabinoids in fighting SARS-CoV-2 infections in the Journal of Natural Products on January 10, 2022. In the following article, cread – All about Cannabis summarizes the most important results of the study in a compact form.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is characterized by crown-like spikes on its outer envelope, known as spikes. These have the ability to dock onto the ACE2 receptor in human cells, thus causing infection with COVID-19. According to the results of the study cited here, it is precisely this docking process that CBDA (CBD acid, the precursor of CBD) and CBGA (CBG acid, the precursor of CBG) can target and both prevent infection with coronavirus and ensure that a disease lasts less time. The approach of preventing the interaction of virus and receptor by means of certain components has already been successfully applied to the HIV-1 and hepatitis C viruses. In the course of the study, various cannabinoids derived from the hemp plant were tested for their effectiveness. CBDA and CBGA proved to be by far the most effective, with CBGA even slightly better than CBDA. Both successfully blocked both the original SARS-CoV-2 virus and both alpha and beta mutations. Other cannabinoids such as CBN (cannabinol) or CBC (cannabichromene) showed little to no efficacy.

Regarding the procedure within the study, it is important to say that in a first step it was tested whether the two cannabinoids were successful in the “fight” against a pseudovirus, i.e. whether they could successfully prevent the entry of the pseudovirus into the human cell. In a next step, the same experiment was done with the real SARS-CoV-2 virus. In both cases, CBDA and CBGA prevented the virus from entering the human cell or docking with the spike proteins. The concentration of cannabinoids needed to prevent 50% of the viruses from docking is high, according to the researchers, but clinically it should be possible to achieve this in treatment.

In concluding the published article, the researchers felt it was important to emphasize that it is the combination of the cannabinoids with the vaccination that provides the desired effect: the creation of an environment in human cells that makes it massively more difficult for the SARS-CoV-2 virus to dock and cause infection and disease.

In a nutshell:

Researchers from the U.S. have found that CBDA and CBGA can help against coronavirus. When combined with vaccination, CBDA and CBGA can help in two places: They can prevent people from contracting the coronavirus, and they can shorten the duration of the disease.

Source: Cannabinoids Block Cellular Entry of SARS-CoV-2 and the Emerging Variants, in Journal of Natural Products, accessed via: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jnatprod.1c00946 [01/14/2022, 1:51 pm].