Can CBD Kill Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Like Gonorrhea? Here's What New Study Says

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have warned about bacteria becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics.

Staggering statistics from the World Health Organization reveal that on a global level, 700,000 people die due to infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. 

Another study published in Perspectives in Medicinal Chemistry nearly a decade ago demonstrated that bacteria have developed resistance against every antibiotic that has been developed, following the first reported case in the late 1960s.

While strategies to combat this growing issue have been applied worldwide, one of the unconventional solutions is cannabidiol (CBD).

CBD Used To Kill Bacteria In Cases Of Gonorrhoea, Meningitis & Legionnaires Disease

The main non-psychoactive component in marijuana proved useful against gram-positive bacteria, including strains of Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumonia and Enterococcus faecalis, as well as Neisseria gonorrhoeae which causes various gonococcal infections, according to an earlier study published in Communications Biology.

The research collaboration between The University of Queensland (UQ) and Botanix Pharmaceuticals Limited is poised to yield a new class of antibiotics for resistant bacteria.

“This is the first time CBD has been shown to kill some types of Gram-negative bacteria,” said Mark Blaskovich, Associate Prof in Bioscience at  UQ.
“These bacteria have an extra outer membrane, an additional line of defense that makes it harder for antibiotics to penetrate."

Latest Research

Another preclinical study has confirmed results from previous studies that CBD could prove useful in killing bacteria, said researchers at ASM Microbe in Washington, D.C.

“We have a long-lasting interest in the search of novel antimicrobial hits for further drug development,” Povilas Kavaliauskas, MSc, of Weill Cornell Medicine, told Healio. “We have recently developed a small molecule library that contained CBD as one of the investigational compounds. While screening this library on multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, we got a promising hit.”

Researchers said that pure CBD (98.6%) proved useful against all tested MRSA and VISA strains. Moreover, it was comparable to or greater than vancomycin - an antibiotic used to treat infections, such as enterocolitis caused by Staphylococcus aureus.

However, despite a substantial rise in popularity CBD has seen over the past decade, being touted as at least a help if not even a cure for a myriad of conditions, ranging from anxiety to joint pain, it continues to raise skepticism from the general population.

“As scientists, our goal is to provide the translational preclinical data that could benefit patients and especially those that have extensively drug-resistant infections,” Kavaliauskas said. “We are now seriously investigating CBD as an antimicrobial, and currently, CBD is one of the major hits for our hit-to-lead optimization pipeline.”

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