Nerolidol in the pharmacy list: two studies on mice and six strains

• In the pharmacy list. It leads in 6 out of 85 strains and is the leading terpene for them according to pharmacy data.
• Evidence. 2 studies from 2016 to 2026, all on animals or in cell culture, none on patients using the herb.
• Temperature. 276.0 °C, with the measurement condition determining whether the number means anything.
• What we do not provide. Percentage share in the profile, as the denominator in the sources varies and the numbers are not comparable between strains.

What is nerolidol and where is it found outside of cannabis?

Nerolidol is a sesquiterpene alcohol with the formula C15H26O and a molecular weight of 222.37, occurring in two geometric forms. Plants produce it far beyond cannabis: it can be found in the essential oils of cardamom and pepper plants of the genus Piper, and it owes its name to neroli oil, pressed from the flower of the bitter orange.

The difference from myrcene or limonene is not a mere naming detail. The latter are hydrocarbons, while this compound has a hydroxyl group in its molecule and half as many carbon atoms, making it an oily liquid with distinctly lower volatility. The PubChem record number 5284507 gives the systematic name for the trans form as (6E)-3,7,11-trimethyldodeca-1,6,10-trien-3-ol; the second form differs in the arrangement of substituents at one double bond.

The physical description in the same record comes from the FAO and WHO committee on food additives: a colorless or very pale, straw-colored liquid with an oily consistency and a faint woody-floral scent with a hint of rosy apple. The fact that this particular committee described the compound is not a coincidence. The substance has been used for decades as a fragrance component in cosmetics and is an approved food flavoring, so most of the physicochemical data we have about it comes from evaluations for food, not from studies on inhaling hot vapor. This circumstance returns in two further sections.

In how many pharmacy positions does this terpene appear at all?

In the database budcare.pl, it appears in 52 out of 146 described registered positions, in the medweed.pl database in 8 out of 65. On the side of cultivars, the same range is visible: the pharmacy list indicates this compound as leading for six strains, while profile databases list it in the composition of twenty-five.

These two measures do not count the same thing. The pharmacy list assigns one leading terpene to each position, while the profile database lists the entire set, so a strain with our compound in fourth place enters the second set and does not enter the first. Merging both lists into one gives a number that does not answer either the question about the label or the question about the composition.

This is also where our refusal to provide percentage shares with terpene names comes from. We calculated the sums of all shares declared for a single position in the budcare.pl database, considering those 52 records where nerolidol is present at all. The range came out from 14 to 102 with a median of 82.5, and two records exceeded one hundred. Since the complete composition sometimes gives a few dozen and sometimes over a hundred, the denominator is different in each record and a single number pulled from such a table does not measure anything verifiable.

This is most sharply visible in Pink Kush. Seven positions of this strain have a total of 14 in the database, while two positions of Aurora sum to 87 and 91, with a completely different hierarchy of components at the top. One trade name, two declarations that cannot be reconciled.

Inconsistencies are not only between databases. For Galaxy Walker OG, one profile source describes a position produced by S-LAB solely with myrcene, while a position from Tilray opens with nerolidol, even though it concerns the same cultivar. For Wedding Pie, one database places this substance at the top of the weight list, while another does not mention it at all; for Northern Berry, the roles are reversed. Farm Gas has a record in one of the sources composed of a single ingredient, and it is precisely this substance.

How long does this terpene take to reach the body and how long does it stay in it?

It is unknown. No study from the evidence base of this project measured the concentration of nerolidol in human blood after vaporizing the herb or after ingestion. Only what depends on the route of administration and concerns the entire raw material, not a single component taken from the terpene profile, can be described honestly.

The route of administration determines the course more than the strain itself. After vaporization, the substance passes from the lungs to the blood almost immediately, so the first sensations appear after a few minutes, the intensity increases for another ten to thirty minutes, and the whole effect wears off within two to four hours. After ingestion, the raw material first passes through the intestine and liver, so the first sensations are awaited from half an hour to two, and the episode lasts six, sometimes eight hours. This is where the most common mistake in oral administration comes from: those who think that nothing is happening after thirty minutes and take another dose will receive both doses at once. The above ranges describe the route of administration, not this strain; pharmacokinetic studies for a single cultivar have not been published.

It has not been calculated either what portion of this compound passes from the plant material to the vapor when heated. It is known that it is a substance significantly less volatile than monoterpenes, so assigning it the above temporal distribution would be a guess, not a reading from measurement. Where the data ends, this paragraph also ends.

Is 275-277 degrees Celsius the vaporizer setting?

No. This is the only record of the boiling point of pure nerolidol that we have in the data, coming from one source and given without measurement pressure. The boiling point indicates when the entire liquid in the vessel evaporates, not how to set the device, and we do not derive any setting range from it.

Two rows of this table show why directly comparing such numbers can be misleading. Humulene has the only record made at a pressure of three millimeters of mercury and comes out at less than one hundred degrees, which is less than for limonene, even though the molecule is heavier. Caryophyllene has both types of measurements at once, and the difference between them exceeds one hundred twenty-five degrees. The record for nerolidol does not specify the pressure at all, so it cannot be determined which of these two groups it belongs to, and comparing it with the rest of the column is therefore risky.

There is also a more serious issue than pressure. The herb is not a pure reagent: in the device chamber, the plant material is heated, in which the substance is embedded in glands along with dozens of others, so the value measured for a test tube does not directly translate to the device. Therefore, you will not find a single recommended temperature setting or administration instructions here: these are established by the attending physician together with the patient, not by the description of the chemical compound.

What have studies shown about the action of this terpene?

Two things, both in mice. The first study described a weaker pain response along with a decrease in two pro-inflammatory cytokines, the second a longer time to seizure along with lower markers of oxidative stress in the brain. None of them included humans, and none studied inhalation.

The model is part of the result here, not a footnote. Both studies administered the pure substance calculated per kilogram of body weight, the first intraperitoneally, the second via the gastrointestinal tract. A human inhaling vapor from the herb does not receive either such a form or such a quantity, so transferring the conclusion to him is an abuse, not a shorthand. A decade separates the two studies, and neither worked with plant material: mice received a reagent, not herb, so it is not even known how the same effect would behave in a mixture with a hundred other components of the flower.

This is better seen against the backdrop of the entire literature collected for these pages. It contains twenty-two studies spread over eleven terpenes. None of them included humans. Two positions do not concern any mammal at all, as one describes an experimental plant along with an aphid, and the other is a review of insect literature. Our compound is not an exception here, but a typical case: the literature cited in commercial descriptions as evidence of action on humans ends with rodents, cell cultures, or insects.

What has not been shown about this terpene?

It has not been shown that nerolidol alleviates anxiety or insomnia in humans; both available studies concern rodents and describe analgesic, anticonvulsant, and antioxidant effects, not sleep or mood. This sentence is the most important in the entire text and does not constitute a legal disclaimer, but a description of what has been measured and published so far.

Descriptions of strains circulating online attribute calming and sleep-inducing effects to this substance. Neither study included such a measurement or endpoint: the first counted abdominal contractions after acetic acid administration, the second the time to seizures induced by pentylene tetrazole. None studied sleep, none studied mood, none studied anxiety, and least of all in humans.

It has also not been shown three further things that patients most often ask about. First, no one has measured how much of this compound enters the blood after vaporization, so even if the effect in mice could be transferred, there is a missing link regarding exposure. Second, it has not been checked whether the substance alters the effects of THC or other components of the herb; the popular hypothesis about the mutual enhancement of plant components has not been tested for this pair. Third, no dose for humans has been established, as this requires a study involving them, and there is none.

So the honest answer is this: two signals from animals and zero measurements in humans. A service that writes otherwise does not have newer data, only less caution. The question of what has not been shown receives a separate section on these pages precisely because the lack of evidence can be more valuable to the patient than another paragraph about aroma.

What adverse effects have been reported after this terpene?

None, because no one collects them in this way. Safety monitoring covers the medicinal product, not a single component of the oil, so reports after the herb cannot be attributed to the terpene. The evidence base of this project has no studies on adverse effects for nerolidol.

Reports of adverse effects are collected for medicinal products with a batch number, not for the strain name, so the following concerns cannabis herb as a group of raw materials. The most commonly reported effects are dry mouth, red eyes, and increased heart rate. Less frequently described are dizziness upon rapid standing, daytime drowsiness, and temporary worsening of short-term memory, as well as anxiety increasing with the dose. A separate issue is medications taken concurrently, especially sedatives and those affecting coagulation: their assessment requires knowledge of the entire list of preparations, not the description of the plant. We do not provide the frequency of these symptoms numerically, as public compilations for cannabis herb in Poland do not separate them by individual products.

As for the substance itself, we know as much as about fragrance components in general: at high concentrations, they can irritate the respiratory tract and skin. The safety assessment that the compound passed as a food flavoring concerns ingestion of flavoring amounts, not inhaling hot vapor for extended periods. These two routes of administration differ in what the respiratory epithelium encounters, so we do not transfer conclusions from the first to the second. If someone wanted to describe the inhalation risk for the terpene itself, they would have to start with a study that no one has done so far.

Which strains from Polish pharmacies have this terpene as dominant?

Six: Galaxy Walker OG, Headband, Pink Certz, Pink Kush, Rockstar, and Strawberry OG. This is how many positions in the pharmacy list have this compound indicated as the leading terpene, out of eighty-five cultivars in the entire listing. They correspond to twenty-one catalog numbers out of one hundred forty-one that we have collected for these strains.

The list is short and highly uneven. Pink Kush occupies eight numbers from five producers, Strawberry OG one from one, and the rest fall between these extremes. On the side of producers, the same concentration is visible: S-LAB supplies five of these six strains, Tilray four, and the remaining entities have one each.

The table describes the indication from the label, not the composition. Profile databases list nerolidol in the composition of twenty-five cultivars in this listing, which is a group more than four times larger. Besides the six from the table, they include: Beach Crasher, Black Tuna, Chemango Kush, Electric Honeydew, Farm Gas, Island Sweet Skunk, Jack Herer, Jean Guy, King Sherb, Mango, Master Kush, Northern Berry, Purple Octane, Purps, Sherbert Scotti, Sirius, Tilray Sirius, Wedding Pie, White Widow.

The difference between both lists is not a formality. A patient looking for a strain described by a given terpene usually encounters the indication from the label, which comes from one producer’s declaration for one batch, not from an average of measurements. The composition provided by profile databases, on the other hand, comes from commercial descriptions, copied between parties without stating the method. Therefore, we present both lists separately and do not present either as a measurement of content.

The availability of each of these positions changes from month to month, as it depends on batch releases and wholesale orders, so we maintain the current state in the listing of strains available in Polish pharmacies, not in this text. A separate issue is the nomenclature: herb dispensed from a pharmacy on prescription in the Rpw category and cannabis herb sold without a prescription in the store section are two different legal categories that should not be confused.

Frequently asked questions about nerolidol

Does nerolidol induce sleep?

It is unknown. Both studies from the evidence base of this project concern mice and did not measure sleep with any endpoint, so the description of sedative action has no basis in them.

Does nerolidol have anxiolytic effects in humans?

This has not been shown. Neither of the two studies included humans, and neither had anxiety among the measured endpoints.

At what temperature does nerolidol evaporate?

The only record in our data states 275-277 degrees Celsius for the pure compound, without specified measurement pressure. This is not a device setting, and we do not derive any of this number.

How many strains from Polish pharmacies have nerolidol as the leading terpene?

Six out of eighty-five cultivars in our listing, totaling twenty-one catalog positions out of one hundred forty-one.

Why do you not provide how much of this terpene is in the strain?

Because the denominator is unknown. The sums of shares declared for one position range in the profile database from 14 to 102, and two records exceed one hundred.

Does nerolidol occur only in cannabis?

No. It is found in the essential oils of many plants, including cardamom and pepper plants of the genus Piper, and it owes its name to neroli oil from the flower of the bitter orange.

Have adverse effects been reported after nerolidol itself?

There are no such reports in our database. Safety monitoring is conducted for medicinal products with a batch number, not for a single component of the oil.

Cannabis herb is a pharmaceutical raw material dispensed by a doctor’s prescription in the Rpw category. The material is informational in nature and describes the state of evidence, it does not replace the advice of a doctor or pharmacist. The editorial text was prepared by the editorial team of ubucha.pl.