People with dementia who were experiencing agitation near the end of life had significantly less agitation after taking a medical formulation combining THC and CBD, the two best-known active compounds in marijuana, compared with those given a placebo. The findings come from the LiBBY trial (Life's end Benefits of cannaBidiol and tetrahYdrocannabinol) and were presented on July 14, 2026, at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in London by Jacobo Mintzer, MD, of the Medical University of South Carolina, and Brigid Reynolds, MSN, APRN, ANP-BC, of Georgetown University.
The trial enrolled 120 people with Alzheimer's disease or other dementias who were hospice-eligible and agitated. Rather than requiring families to travel to research sites, study visits were carried out in participants' homes or residences by teams at ten medical centers across the country. Close to 90% of participants who received the active treatment showed overall improvement at 12 weeks - a response rate the investigators called extremely impressive and unlike anything previously seen in dementia trials, where such high proportions of responders are rare.
Agitation is one of the hardest symptoms for families and hospice staff to manage. It drives distress, caregiver burnout, and the use of sedating medications that carry real risks for frail older adults. A treatment that reliably calms agitation without those trade-offs would matter enormously in the final months of life, which is exactly the population LiBBY was designed to study.
The results are early in the sense that they were presented at a scientific meeting, and the trial was modest in size and focused specifically on hospice-eligible patients, so it remains to be seen how the formulation performs in people at earlier stages of dementia. Still, a placebo-controlled signal this strong in a group with few good options is likely to push this line of research forward quickly.