[Potential therapeutic usefulness of cannabis and cannabinoids]. / Posible utilidad terapéutica del cannabis y los cannabinoides.

Diseases in which Cannabis and cannabinoids have demonstrated some medicinal putative properties are: nausea and vomiting associated with cancer chemotherapy, muscle spasticity (multiple sclerosis, movement disorders), pain, anorexia, epilepsy, glaucoma, bronchial asthma, neuroegenerative diseases, cancer, etc. Although some of the current data comes from clinical controlled essays, the majority are based on anecdotic reports. Basic pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies and more extensive controlled clinical essays with higher number of patients and long term studies are necessary to consider these compounds useful since a therapeutical point of view.

[Stress and neurodegeneration: pharmacologic strategies]. / Estrés y neurodegeneración: estrategias farmacológicas.

Long-term exposure to stress has detrimental effects on several brain functions in many species, including humans and leads to neurodegenerative changes. However, the underlying neural mechanisms by which stress causes neurodegeneration are still unknown. We have investigated the role of endogenously released nitric oxide (NO) in this phenomenon and the possible induction of inducible NO synthase (iNOS) isoform. In adult male rats, stress (immobilisation for 6 h during 21 days) increases the activity of a calcium-independent NOS and induces the expression of iNOS in cortical neurons as seen by immunohistochemical and Western blot analysis. Three weeks of repeated immobilisation increases immunoreactivity for nitrotyrosine, a nitration product of peroxynitrate. Repeated stress causes NO2(-) + NO3- (NOx) accumulation in cortex, and these changes occurs in parallel with lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release and impairment of glutamate uptake in synaptosomes. The administration of the preferred iNOS inhibitor aminoguanidine (400 mg/kg i.p. daily from days 7 to 21 of stress) prevents NOx- accumulation in cortex, LDH release and impairment of glutamate uptake in synaptosomes, as well as other markers of oxidative stress such as lipid peroxidation and decrease in glutation. Taken together, these findings indicate that a sustained overproduction of nitric oxide via iNOS expression may be responsible, at least in part, of some of the neurodegenerative changes caused by stress, and support a possible neuro-protective role for specific iNOS inhibitors in this situation.

[The effect of oxytocin on contractility of the human uterine artery]. / Effets de l'ocytocine sur la contractilité de l'artère utérine humaine.

We have studied in this work 30 human uterine arteries which were taken from hysterectomy specimens where the indication for the hysterectomy was obstetrical or gynaecological. The arteries were prepared in strips using furchgott and Bhadrakom's technique that they developed for the isolated aorta of the rabbit so that the authors could study the response to oxytocin on the isolated human uterine artery. When CIK was added to the preparation in which the arteries were, oxytocin had an antagonistic effect which was dose-dependent. The same effect was noted when Cl2Ba was added.