Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Research Paper

First Advisor

Sylvia Vetrone

Abstract

50% of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD) have behavior abnormalities ranging from anxiety, to tantrum, to behavior outbreaks. Of these children, 40% are not responding to the treatment options available today (behavior therapy and medical treatments). There is a need within the ASD community that is not being address and because of that the desperate parents of these children have been turning to unconventional treatments, such as medical marijuana. Although there have been several anecdotes speaking to the power of cannabis, there is a severe slack of scientific data and research to demonstrate the effectiveness of cannabis in treating these behavioral issues displayed by children with ASD. Countless studies conducted on animal models of ASD have pointed to the endocannabinoid system (ECS) as being a potential target for treatment development in relation to these observed behavior issues. Current studies show that alterations within the ECS are in part responsible for the deficits in social-emotional processing and behavioral regulations characteristics ASD. Findings from present studies also show that these deficits can be reduced and in some cases eliminated by altering the ECS via pharmacological and/or genetic methods. Cannabis has been proposed by countless studies as a natural, potential treatment option for altering the ECS of children with ASD. The first clinical trial is being conducted on children with ASD to explore the effects that a medical marijuana treatment can have on the ECS and the behaviors of these children. This literature review compiles the limited, current data in this area of research and synthesizes it to provide an argument for why cannabis could be a novel treatment for the behavioral abnormalities associated with ASD.

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