FDA is trying to fear monger about CBD

Dr Gu: Surgeon-scientist trying to save the lives of babies with congenital heart and kidney diseases. President and CEO of Ganogen.

Tweets from Dr Gu:

“As a doctor, I think this is total BS. There was one poorly done mouse study in a predatory journal that became clickbait for journalists who don’t understand the actual science. The data was crap. Health reporters know how to fear monger but never went to medical school. Scary.

“If you carefully read the clinical trial for treating Dravet syndrome with an FDA approved drug called Epidiolex, which is CBD, all the patients who had elevated liver enzymes were taking valproate, which can hurt the liver. So CBD just altered the metabolism of valproate.

“We live in a society where sensationalism overrides medical science and affects health policy. That should scare every single American out there. Journalists who don’t know anything other than getting clicks, views and fear mongering are now dictating your health with hit pieces.”

More commentary from Dr Gu including some questions and replies:

There’s no evidence CBD damages the liver in humans. There is evidence that valproate, an anti-seizure medication that can hurt the liver, can cause elevated liver enzymes when taken with CBD because it affects its pharmacodynamics. That’s not a reason for the FDA to ban CBD.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) November 26, 2019

The FDA is cool with oxycontin and fentanyl driving the opioid epidemic and dirty romaine lettuce making us pee blood and go into kidney failure but it wants to ban e-cigarettes to help Big Tobacco and ban CBD to help Big Pharma. What a country.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) November 27, 2019

CBD, like grapefruit juice, lowers activity of Cytochrome P450 in the liver. This affects the metabolism of drugs like valproate, which patients were taking in clinical trials using CBD to treat Dravet syndrome. Elevated liver enzymes from valproate is now being blamed on CBD.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) November 26, 2019

While CBD can affect the metabolism of other drugs, there is no credible evidence that it damages the liver at the doses that people use. When it comes to pain control, acetaminophen is much more dangerous for your liver and is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the US.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) November 26, 2019

It seems to me that Trump’s FDA is trying to fear monger about CBD because the big pharmaceutical companies want to attach a name and a label to it and make billions of dollars selling it to you for hundreds of dollars which is only possible if they destroy cheaply available CBD.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) November 26, 2019

Can you expand please

— Royce Coolidge (@CruceBradwick) November 26, 2019

If you are interested in further reading, I recommend going straight to the source and coming to your own conclusions. This article in the New England Journal of Medicine may be a bit dense and difficult to read for a layperson, but still worth seeing. https://t.co/4XqF3gjnlx pic.twitter.com/0kgQ4XXk4W

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) November 26, 2019

Here is the linked study: NEJoM

https://twitter.com/hydrocodonot/status/1199433164667666432

Every single study out there, other that that truly ridiculous mouse study that Forbes magazine got tricked by, shows elevated liver enzymes only when CBD is co-administered with valproate. It’s probably a pharmacodynamic effect between the two drugs.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) November 26, 2019

Yeah it’s been selling everywhere and overhyped about curing everything and yet I haven’t seen a single case report of a patient who got liver damage from CBD alone when it wasn’t co-administered with valproate or another hepatotoxic drug.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) November 27, 2019