What to Know About That Study About Cannabis and COVID Prevention

This week there has been a lot of buzz about a new study on marijuana and COVID-19, the miraculous gist of the headlines being that cannabis prevents COVID. More specifically, the study, published in the Journal of Natural Products on January 10, found that two common cannabis compounds could prevent the SARS-CoV-2 virus from penetrating isolated human cells in a lab study. Here’s what you should understand about the study, including what the researchers found, important caveats and limitations, and what we have yet to learn. To do this, they incubated a piece of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in a mixture of hemp extracts and observed which compounds within the hemp extract glommed onto the spike protein. They found that three different acids had a strong affinity for binding to the spike protein: cannabidiolic acid (CBD-A) cannabigerolic acid (CBG-A), and tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THC-A).