Researchers estimate that roughly 20% of the world’s population suffers from chronic pain. It is possible that due to various factors, many cases go undiagnosed in some regions of the world, and that the actual number of chronic pain sufferers could be much greater.
A patient experiencing temporary pain is not the same as chronic pain. Chronic pain occurs when patients still suffer from it well after the expected recovery time for an injury or illness, sometimes lasting weeks or even years.
Investigators in Israel recently conducted a study in which they examined reported disease burden rates and cannabis extract use among chronic pain patients. Below is more information about the study and its results via a news release from NORML:
Haifa, Israel: Patients’ use of cannabis oil extracts is associated with long-term improvements in their pain intensity and related symptoms, according to data published in the journal Pain Reports.
Israeli researchers assessed the safety and efficacy of cannabis extracts in a cohort of 218 middle-aged chronic pain patients (mean age: 54) over six months. Patients consumed sublingual extracts containing standardized THC and CBD concentrations.
Cannabis treatment was associated with sustained reductions in pain intensity, opioid use, anxiety, depression, and sleep deprivation. Though some subjects did report “mild to moderate” side effects from cannabis, these events did not interrupt their “continuous use” of marijuana extracts throughout the study period.
“Cannabis seems to have an impact on the ‘disease burden’ of chronic pain,” the study’s authors concluded. “It also has a positive effect on functioning and health-related quality of life.”
The researchers’ findings are consistent with those of other larger observational studies involving thousands of pain patients enrolled in medical cannabis access programs.
Full text of the study, “Cannabis oil extracts for chronic pain: What else can be learned from another structured prospective cohort,” appears in Pain Reports. Additional information on cannabis and chronic pain is available from NORML’s publication, Clinical Applications for Cannabis & Cannabinoids.
This article first appeared on Internationalcbc.com and is syndicated here with special permission.
Photo by Chelsea Shapouri on Unsplash
