Medicinal cannabis: Pharmaceutical forms and recent analytical methodologies

ALEJANDRA FANOVICH; MARÍA SANDRA CHURIO; CRISTINA LUJAN RAMIREZ;

Comprehensive Analytical Chemistry

Elsevier

Año: 2020; p. 1 - 33

Cannabis sativa has been widely used in ethnomedicine. Despite thebenefits of the species, recreational use due to the psychoactive effects hasled in the 20th century to classify it as an illegal drug, thus obstructing furthersurvey [1]. With the worldwide extension of legalization of cannabis formedicinal purposes, there is a revived and growing interest in this plant,nowadays used by people with different pathologies. However, the numberof fields involved in this subject is so vast (i.e. botany, molecular biology,analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, pharmacology, clinical medicine),that compilation of the information altogether has been difficult. This chap-ter aims to summarize the bioactivity of phytocannabinoids on their specificreceptors, the traditional and novel pharmaceutical formulations, the pro-cesses to which cannabinoids are subjected in the organism and the analyticalmethodologies for analysing the organic matrices exposed to them. Thesecontents should contribute to set the rational bases needed for the designof training programs for health care providers, such as pharmacists and phy-sicians, as well as the general audience concerning Good ManufacturingPractices and the problematic around medicinal products without qualitycontrol.