“Serious clinical liabilities associated with the prescription of opiates for pain control include constipation, respiratory depression, pruritus, tolerance, abuse, and addiction.
A recognized strategy to circumvent these side effects is to combine opioids with other antinociceptive agents.
The combination of opiates with the primary active constituent of cannabis, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol, produces enhanced antinociceptive actions, suggesting that cannabinoid receptor agonists can be opioid sparing…
Here, we tested whether elevating the endogenous cannabinoid 2-arachidonylglycerol (2-AG) through the inhibition of its primary hydrolytic enzyme monoacylglycerol lipase (MAGL), will produce opioid sparing effects…
These findings, taken together, suggest that MAGL inhibition produces opiate sparing events with diminished tolerance, constipation, and cannabimemetic side effects.”