Cannabis may ease chronic pain

Smoking cannabis from a pipe may help ease chronic pain associated with damaged nerves, according to new research.

"This is the first trial to be conducted where patients have been allowed to smoke cannabis at home and to monitor their responses, daily," said Dr. Mark Ware, a researcher in neuroscience at McGill University Faculty of Medicine, who led the study.

The results also showed that smoking cannabis improved the patients moods and helped them to sleep better.

In the small study, 21 patients with chronic pain caused by nerve damage were given low doses of cannabis to smoke three times a day from a pipe for five days and cannabis containing different concentrations of the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) were compared.

The study found that 25mg of cannabis containing around 10 per cent THC worked best at easing pain, improving anxiety and helping patients sleep better.

The effects were less pronounced in cannabis strains containing less than 10 per cent THC.

"To our knowledge, this is the first outpatient clinical trial of smoked cannabis ever reported. It is one of only a handful of studies on smoked cannabis and neuropathic pain," the researchers said.

Currently, few effective treatments are available for people suffering from chronic nerve pain, Dr Ware said.

"For these patients, medical cannabis is sometimes seen as their last hope. This study marks an important step forward because it demonstrates the analgesic effects of cannabis at a low dose over a short period of time for patients suffering from chronic neuropathic pain."

He added that additional studies were needed using more patients and higher doses of THC to test the long-term safety of medical cannabis.

The study findings are published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal

This article was published on Tue 31 August 2010