According to a peer-reviewed study, for most cancer patients, pain levels improved significantly, and other symptoms also decreased with cannabis use.
The Technion study published earlier this month in Frontiers in Pain Research, found that for most cancer patients, pain levels improved significantly and other symptoms also decreased with the use of medical cannabis.
Oncology patients commonly suffer from depression, anxiety and insomnia in addition to pain during treatment. Suffering through such symptoms worsens a patient’s quality of life, and can even negatively affect the prognosis.
“Traditionally, cancer-related pain is mainly treated by opioid analgesics, but most oncologists perceive opioid treatment as hazardous, so alternative therapies are required,” explained author David Meiri, an assistant professor at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology.
According to the Health Ministry, Israel has the highest rate of cannabis patients in relation to the population.
“Patients completed anonymous questionnaires before starting treatment, and again at several time points during the following six months,” explained study co-author Gil Bar-Sela, associate professor at the Ha’Emek Medical Center Afula. “We gathered data on a number of factors, including pain measures, analgesics consumption, cancer symptom burden, sexual problems and side effects,” he said.
Researchers found through the data that the patients’ had noticeably improved and, critically, their opioid use was significantly reduced. Nearly half of the patients stopped all other pain medication after six months of medicinal cannabis treatment.
“Although our study was very comprehensive and presented additional perspectives on medical cannabis, the sex, age, and ethnicity, as well as cancer types and the stage of cancer meant the variety of patients in our study was wide-ranging,” Meiri concluded. “Therefore, future studies should investigate the level of effectiveness of medicinal cannabis in specific subgroups of cancer patients with more shared characteristics.”
