“There is sufficient evidence that medical marijuana is effective in treating epileptic seizures and chronic pain.
Medical marijuana may improve the level of functioning and quality of life for individuals with certain disabilities.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30456993
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09638288.2018.1523952?journalCode=idre20
“Low back pain (LBP) occurs in many patients with fibromyalgia (FM). The current study aimed to assess the possible pain and function amelioration associated with medical cannabis therapy (MCT) in this setting.
31 patients were involved in an observational cross-over study. The patients were screened, treated with 3 months of standardised analgesic therapy (SAT): 5 mg of oxycodone hydrochloride equivalent to 4.5 mg oxycodone and 2.5 mg naloxone hydrochloride twice a day and duloxetine 30 mg once a day. Following 3 months of this therapy, the patients could opt for MCT and were treated for a minimum of 6 months. Patient reported outcomes (PRO’s) included: FIQR, VAS, ODI and SF-12 and lumbar range of motion (ROM) was recorded using the modified Schober test.
While SAT led to minor improvement as compared with baseline status, the addition of MCT allowed a significantly higher improvement in all PRO’s at 3 months after initiation of MCT and the improvement was maintained at 6 months. ROM improved after 3 months of MCT and continued to improve at 6 months.
This observational cross-over study demonstrates an advantage of MCT in FM patients with LBP as compared with SAT. Further randomised clinical trial studies should assess whether these results can be generalised to the FM population at large.”
“The history of Cannabis goes along that of humankind, as speculated based on geographical and evolutionary models together with historic data collected to date. Its medical use is several thousand years old, as attested both by archeobotanical evidence of Cannabis remains and written records found in ancient texts from the sacred Vedic foundational texts of Ayurvedic medicine (about 800 before current era [BCE]) to the first known Pharmacopoea, the Chinese “Shen Nung Pen Ts’ao Ching” (1 century BCE). In this paper, we retrace the history of Cannabis traveling through the key stages of its diffusion among the most important ancient cultures up to our days, when we are facing a renaissance of its medical employment. We report through the centuries evidence of its use in numerous pathologic conditions especially for its anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, and anticonvulsing properties that support the requirement to direct our present research efforts into the definitive understanding of its efficacy.”
“Are medicinal cannabinoids effective and well tolerated in the treatment of multiple sclerosis?
Findings In this systematic review and meta-analysis of 17 randomized clinical trials including 3161 patients, cannabinoids were significantly associated with efficacy for subjective spasticity, pain, and bladder dysfunction compared with placebo. Cannabinoids had a higher risk of adverse events and withdrawals due to adverse events, with no statistically significant differences found for serious adverse events.
Meaning Cannabinoids appear to be safe regarding serious adverse events, but their clinical benefit may be limited.
Cannabinoids have antispastic and analgesic effects.
The results suggest a limited efficacy of cannabinoids for the treatment of spasticity, pain, and bladder dysfunction in patients with MS. Therapy using these drugs can be considered as safe.”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2706499
“Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is one of the most curable malignancies. Despite its effectiveness, chemotherapy is often associated with adverse events (AEs) such as nausea, anorexia, and impairment of general well-being.
Our objective was to assess the extent of medical cannabis use among HL patients and evaluate its efficacy in controlling chemotherapy-related AEs.
Cannabis users reported improvement in pain, general well-being, appetite, and nausea in 94, 87, 82, and 79% of cases, respectively. Importantly, 81.5% reported a high overall efficacy of cannabis in relieving symptoms. AEs related to cannabis use itself were mild.
Thus, medical cannabis use is prevalent in this HL cohort, and appears to be effective in ameliorating chemotherapy-related AEs.”
“The current study aimed to determine the impact of marijuana on mood in bipolar patients and to examine whether marijuana confers an additional negative impact on cognitive function.
Findings suggest that for some bipolar patients, marijuana may result in partial alleviation of clinical symptoms. Moreover, this improvement is not at the expense of additional cognitive impairment.
The current study highlights preliminary evidence that patients with BPD who regularly smoked MJ reported at least short-term clinical symptom alleviation following MJ use, indicating potential mood-stabilizing properties of MJ in at least a subset of patients with BPD.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27275781
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0157060
“Cannabidiol (CBD), the major non-psychoactive constituent of Cannabis sativa, has received attention for therapeutic potential in treating neurologic and psychiatric disorders. Recently, CBD has also been explored for potential in treating drug addiction.
Substance use disorders are chronically relapsing conditions and relapse risk persists for multiple reasons including craving induced by drug contexts, susceptibility to stress, elevated anxiety, and impaired impulse control.
Here, we evaluated the “anti-relapse” potential of a transdermal CBD preparation in animal models of drug seeking, anxiety and impulsivity.
The results provide proof of principle supporting potential of CBD in relapse prevention along two dimensions: beneficial actions across several vulnerability states and long-lasting effects with only brief treatment.
The findings also inform the ongoing medical marijuana debate concerning medical benefits of non-psychoactive cannabinoids and their promise for development and use as therapeutics.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29686308
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-018-0050-8
“Most U.S. states have passed medical marijuana laws. In this paper, we study the effects of these laws on violent and property crime. We first estimate models that control for city fixed effects and flexible city-specific time trends. To supplement this regression analysis, we use the synthetic control method which can relax the parallel trend assumption and better account for heterogeneous policy effects.
Both the regression analysis and the synthetic control method suggest no causal effects of medical marijuana laws on violent or property crime at the national level. We also find no strong effects within individual states, except for in California where the medical marijuana law reduced both violent and property crime by 20%.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726811830180X?via%3Dihub
“Legalising medical marijuana shows no effect on crime rates in US states” https://theconversation.com/legalising-medical-marijuana-shows-no-effect-on-crime-rates-in-us-states-102030
“The Releaf AppTM mobile software application (app) data was used to measure self-reported effectiveness and side effects of medical cannabis used under naturalistic conditions.
Results: Releaf AppTM responders used cannabis to treat myriad health symptoms, the most frequent relating to pain, anxiety, and depressive conditions. Significant symptom severity reductions were reported for all the symptom categories, with mean reductions between 2.8 and 4.6 points (ds ranged from 1.29–2.39, ps < 0.001). On average, higher pre-dosing symptom levels were associated with greater reported symptom relief, and users treating anxiety or depression-related symptoms reported significantly more relief (ps < 0.001) than users with pain symptoms. Of the 42 possible side effects, users were more likely to indicate and showed a stronger correlation between symptom relief and experiences of positive (94% of sessions) or a context-specific side effects (76%), whereas negative side effects (60%) were associated with lessened, yet still significant symptom relief and were more common among patients treating a depressive symptom relative to patients treating anxiety and pain-related conditions.
Conclusion: Patient-managed cannabis use is associated with clinically significant improvements in self-reported symptom relief for treating a wide range of health conditions, along with frequent positive and negative side effects.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30210337
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2018.00916/full
“The scientific study of the role of cannabis in pain medicine still lags far behind the growing use driven by public approval. Accumulated clinical experience is therefore an important source of knowledge. However, no study to date has targeted physicians who actually use cannabis in their daily practice.
Sixty-four percent of all practicing pain specialists in Israel responded. Almost all prescribe cannabis. Among them, 63% find cannabis moderately to highly effective, 56% have encountered mild or no side effects, and only 5% perceive it as significantly harmful. Common indications are neuropathic pain (65%), oncological pain (50%), arthralgias (25%), and any intractable pain (29%). Leading contraindications are schizophrenia (76%), pregnancy/breastfeeding (65%), and age <18 years (59%). Only 12% rated cannabis as more hazardous than opiates. On a personal note, 45% prefer cannabis for themselves or a family member. Lastly, 54% would like to see cannabis legalized in Israel.
In this survey, pain clinicians experienced in prescribing cannabis over prolonged periods view it as an effective and relatively safe treatment for chronic pain, based on their own experience. Their responses suggest a possible change of paradigm from using cannabis as the last resort.”