Date of Award:

12-2026

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Biology

Committee Chair(s)

Erin N. Bobeck

Committee

Erin N. Bobeck

Committee

Sara Freeman

Committee

Mona Buhusi

Committee

Amy Odum

Committee

Gregory Madden

Abstract

Medical cannabis, also known as medical marijuana, is becoming a more popular treatment for many diseases, including chronic pain. Chronic pain is difficult to treat, and current pain relievers are less effective in women. Medical cannabis may be a useful alternative to the medications that are currently available, but more research is needed to determine how safe and effective it is. Cannabis belongs to a class of drugs known as cannabinoids, which act on the body’s own endocannabinoid system to produce its effects. Cannabinoids affect the sexes differently, but it is not clear what causes these differences. Our research explored how sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone affect the efficacy of cannabinoids. To do this, I first examined whether removing these hormones would affect the brain’s response to THC, the main ingredient in cannabis. I found that THC affected brain regions differently in mice with depleted hormones. Additionally, THC affected brain regions differently in males and females. Next, I tested whether testosterone and estrogen affected how well cannabinoids worked as pain relievers. I found that testosterone reduced the drug’s efficacy in females, while estrogens reduced its efficacy in males. This would suggest that hormones have a different effect on males and females, leading to differences in the cannabinoid’s pain-relieving ability. Lastly, I sought to determine whether sex affects how immune cells in the brain respond to an injury. My findings show that injury changed expression of the gene that produces cannabinoid receptors, but only in female mice. Overall, these findings show that hormones and immune cells affect how the brain responds to cannabinoids, which may explain why cannabinoids affect the sexes differently. Furthermore, this demonstrates that more research is needed to understand how drugs like cannabis affect males and females to provide treatments that are safer and more effective.

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