New research reveals even worms get the munchies from marijuana

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Even worms get the munchies when exposed to the chemical compounds in marijuana, new research reveals.

Cannabis is well known for making users crave the tastiest, most high-calorie foods.

Now researchers in the United States have found that worms also experience the cravings - known as the "munchies" - after feeding them cannabinoids.

The main cannabinoid is THC, the active ingredient that makes users feel "stoned."

Neuroscientist Professor Shawn Lockery says that nematode worms react to cannabinoids in precisely the same way as dope smokers.

Lockery, of the University of Oregon, said: “Cannabinoids make nematodes hungrier for their favored foods and less hungry for their non-favored foods.

“Thus, the effects of cannabinoids in nematodes parallel the effects of marijuana on human appetites.

“Nematodes diverged from the lineage leading to mammals more than 500 million years ago.

“It is truly remarkable that the effects of cannabinoids on appetite are preserved through this length of evolutionary time.”

Lockery explained that the new study, published in the journal Current Biology, was inspired in 2015 when cannabis became legal in Oregon.

He said: “At the time, our laboratory at the University of Oregon was deeply involved in assessing nematode food preferences as part of our research on the neuronal basis of economic decision-making.

“In almost literally a ‘Friday afternoon experiment’ - read: ‘let’s dump this stuff on to them and see what happens’ - we decided to see if soaking worms in cannabinoids alters existing food preferences.

"It does, and the paper is the result of many years of follow-up research.”

Lockery says cannabinoids are known to act by binding to cannabinoid detector proteins called cannabinoid receptors in the brain, nervous system, and other parts of the body.

He explained that those receptors in the body normally respond to related molecules that are naturally present in the body, known as endocannabinoids.

Lockery said: "The endocannabinoid system plays important roles in eating, anxiety, learning and memory, reproduction, metabolism, and more.

"At the molecular level, the cannabinoid system in nematodes looks a lot like that in people and other animals.

"It begged the question as to whether the so-called hedonic feeding effects of cannabinoids also would be conserved across species."

The research team first showed that worms react to the endocannabinoid anandamide by eating more. They also ate more of their favorite food.

The researchers found that the effects of the endocannabinoids depended on the presence of the worms’ cannabinoid receptors.

In further studies, they genetically replaced the C. elegans cannabinoid receptor with the human cannabinoid receptor to see what would happen, and they found that the animals responded normally to cannabinoids.

Lockery says the discovery emphasizes the commonality of cannabinoid effects in nematodes and humans.

The research team reports that the effects of anandamide also depend on neurons that play a role in food detection.

Lockery said: “We found that the sensitivity of one of the main food-detecting olfactory neurons in C. elegans is dramatically altered by cannabinoids.

“Upon cannabinoid exposure, it becomes more sensitive to favored food odors and less sensitive to non-favored food odors.

"This effect helps explain changes in the worm’s consumption of food, and it is reminiscent of how THC makes tasty food even tastier in humans.”

Lockery believes the findings have "significant" practical implications.

He said: “Cannabinoid signaling is present in the majority of tissues in our body.

“It therefore could be involved in the cause and treatment of a wide range of diseases.

"The fact that the human cannabinoid receptor gene is functional in C. elegans food-choice experiments sets the stage for rapid and inexpensive screening for drugs that target a wide variety of proteins involved in cannabinoid signaling and metabolism, with profound implications for human health.”

The research team is also curious to study the effects of psychedelic drugs on worms.

Lockery added: “Perhaps we can find a new set of similarities between humans and worms, now in the case of drugs that alter perception and psychological well-being."