Trial results find full-spectrum CBD effective for anxiety

Preliminary results from an ongoing clinical trial support the use of full-spectrum high-CBD oil for the treatment of anxiety.

Researchers investigating the clinical and cognitive effects of CBD in patients with anxiety have found it to be effective for symptom reduction with few side-effects.

Patients reported reduced anxiety as well as improvements in mood, sleep, quality of life. They also found they had increased self-control and an ability to think ‘flexibly’.

In the Phase 2 clinical trial, 14 cannabis naive patients with anxiety were treated with a high-CBD full spectrum oil for four weeks.

The targeted daily dose was 30mg, administered three times a day under the tongue. 

A number of recognised measurement scales were used to assess patients’ levels of anxiety throughout the trial, while participants self-reported secondary clinical outcomes of mood and depressive symptoms, sleep disturbance, sexual function, and quality of life.

Researchers also examined the cognitive effects, such as executive function and memory. According to the findings, patients exhibited ‘faster performance with fewer errors’ on tasks and their visual and verbal memory remained stable. 

Patients saw a significant reduction in their anxiety levels after just one week of treatment, at a much lower dose than in previous clinical trials.

Secondary outcome assessments demonstrated improvements in mood, sleep disturbance, quality of life and executive functioning following treatment. 

One trial investigating the CBD and anxiety using an extracted CBD isolate found it to be effective at the considerably higher dose of 300mg.

Those behind this latest study suggest this could be due to the ‘entourage effect’ and the many different compounds working together synergistically in the full-spectrum oil.

The authors concluded: “Initial results from the open-label stage of this clinical trial demonstrated significant improvement of primary outcome assessments of anxiety, providing preliminary evidence that a full-spectrum, high-CBD product may be efficacious for treating anxiety with few side effects.

“Treatment response was demonstrated at a much lower dosage than a previous clinical trial using a single extracted CBD isolate product.

“A definitive assessment of the impact of this novel treatment on clinical symptoms and cognition will be ascertained in the ongoing double-blind, placebo-controlled stage.”

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