Caffeine and Cannabis Effects on the Cerebellar Cortex of Juvenile Rats

Caffeine and cannabis are two of the world most popularly consumed psychoactive substances. While caffeine is consumed with little or no regulation and restrictions in moist of the countries of the world; cannabis safety of consumption has been queried severally and as such, it is labeled an illegal drug in many countries. It is important to appreciate what the effects of these two substances could be especially in juvenile models with an attempt to mimic the real life scenarios where several people consume these drugs as teenagers and adolescents. To this end, 72 juvenile Wistar rats were distributed into six groups labeled A-E. Group A served as the control and the animals were only fed ad libitum; Group B were administered the lower dosage of caffeine; Group C were administered the higher dosages of caffeine; Group D were administered the lower dosage of cannabis; Group E were administered the higher dosage of cannabis while the Group F were administered the both caffeine and cannabis- each substance being the lower dosage. The administration lasted 21 days and the animals were sacrificed thereafter. The cerebellum was excised in each animal; fixed in formal saline and then processed using the Haematoxyline and Eosin staining technique to observe the histological structures of the tissues. Results were taken in forms of photomicrographs, and analysed. Observations show that the higher doses of the agents used had effects that could be deleterious on the cerebellar architecture, especially by morphologically distorting the Purkinje cells.