Clive Ward Able, MD, BPharm, the president of Clintell and a consultant to NeoMind Biosciences Inc. (CSE: NEON) says that a recently study he conducted proved that psilocybin can help patients suffering obesity who have tried other alternatives which have borne no fruits.
Ward Able who is a trained pharmacist and physician made this revelation during an interview with Pharmacy Times in which he said psilocybin can also be used to optimize human health.
The physician says psilocybin has two potential mechanisms of treating obesity. The first one is by giving a psychedelic compound such as psilocybin as a psychotherapy, this approach is known as drug-enhanced psychotherapy.
Ward Able says the first mechanism works as an agonist against serotonergic receptors, more specific, the 5-HT2A receptors.
“What that does is it gives you the psychedelic event, which seems to be able to help along with psychotherapy. Secondly, it also has effects on the 5-HT2C receptors, which are very much related to satiety or hunger and the control of hunger. So there, we can look at a different formulation where we use a much lower dose, probably 10% to 15% of what would normally be used for a psychedelic dose, but you do that on a daily or 4 times a week dosing,” said Able.
Multiple study on psilocybin have been done however, no clinical study has been done on psilocybin and obesity. During his study, Able fed rats with a highly palatable, high calorie diet in which they could eat to their capacity.
Thereafter, they were treated with two different doses of psilocybin, a high dose equivalent to human psychedelic dose and a lower dose targeting the 5-HT2C receptors.
“What was found with those is that both the high dose and the low dose led to less weight gain in both of those arms that were treated with the psilocybin. The decrease in the weight gain gives us a very good, strong signal that this actually is working the way we expect it to work. Now we’ve got to translate this into clinical studies, and that’s what we’re going to be doing next in our proof of concept study,” added Ward Able.
