Could cannabidiol replace antibiotics? STUDY 2021

CBD is now known literally in every corner of the world. Its possible medical use has become a subject of interest for many medical fields, which are conducting new studies with the sole purpose of finally proving how great potential CBD holds.

Today, we bring you a summary of a very interesting study examining the antimicrobial potential of cannabidiol (CBD), especially in connection with the organism's resistance to common antibiotics. The study is completely new, from January 2021 and is by scientists from the Institute of Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Antimicrobial Potential of Cannabidiol

Antibiotics are absolutely crucial medications without which we would not be able to "function" and treat even today's common diseases, such as tonsillitis or sinusitis. In the past, even seemingly trivial respiratory infections were often fatal. However, with the discovery of antibiotics, everything changed.

In recent decades, however, we have begun to face a big problem: antibiotic resistance of the organism. This unwanted resistance to antibiotics is caused by their overuse and the fact that currently, they are used, to put it mildly, even for a slightly stronger cold. The Queensland researchers' study states that this antimicrobial resistance literally "threatens the viability of modern medicine, which largely depends on successful prevention and treatment of bacterial infections". This is truly a major problem requiring a dynamic solution.

The Australian study presents a detailed evaluation of the antimicrobial properties of cannabidiol (CBD), the main non-psychotropic substance from medicinal hemp. The potential effects of CBD were also examined on a broader spectrum of highly resistant pathogens Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Clostridioides difficile. The study results are quite promising, but before we delve into them, let's look at the research process itself...

Research Process

What Led to the Research Idea?

As we mentioned, the research is driven by constantly increasing resistance to antibiotic treatment. Meanwhile, investment in research and development of new types of antibiotics has stopped, with pharmaceutical companies investing their resources in other sectors, leaving only a few new preparations for infection treatment. Antibiotics are an irreplaceable prevention of infection, for example, in patients after complex surgical procedures, after cancer treatment, organ transplantation, or kidney dialysis.

If these patients are also affected by additional infections, they often face untreatable health complications without effective antibiotics. Another reason for researching new ways to combat antibiotic resistance was the fact that essentially no new pharmaceuticals of this type have been discovered and approved for clinical use since the 1960s.