Medical cannabis gives relief to patients with chronic pain
A recent study, led by Joshua Aviram and supervised by Dr. Dorit Pud and Dr. Elon Eisenberg from the University of Haifa in cooperation with the Rambam health care campus, found that marijuana may help give relief to patients suffering from chronic pain. The study examined a total of 1,205 patients, aged 18-95, and was meant to evaluate the long term influence of medical cannabis on chronic pain.
The objective of the study was to create a database of patients being treated with medicinal cannabis for relief of chronic pain. The research tried to collect data about the effectiveness and safety of medicinal cannabis, thus trying to find indications for success or failure of this kind of treatment.
This is a multi-center study and it involved several physicians from different medical centers. Doctors recruited their patients after they acquired a permit for use of medical cannabis from the Israeli Ministry of Health. The study was built upon a web-based questionnaire that the patients filled out before they started treatment with cannabis and also 1, 3, 6, 9 and 12 month after they began. 676 patients answered the first survey after 1 month, 604 answered after 3 month, 428 after 6 and 202 after 12 month of treatment.
Although the study is still ongoing and has yet to br completed, current results show mild long term improvement of chronic pain and relative symptoms with medical cannabis treatment. A small group of the patients reported experiencing side effects that accompanied the treatment, but those gradually decreased over the 12 month of treatment.