According to a meta-analysis that was published last week by Cochrane, marijuana may be able to reduce neuropathic pain, but not by a lot and not by much more than a placebo would.
The authors of the meta-analysis had evaluated 16 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials. There were a total of 1,750 people that tested a variety of marijuana-derived compounds either against placebos or a pain killer.
20% of the people had cut their pain in half using cannabis while 17% of the people did the same with a placebo. 10% of the people withdrew from the trials due to the side effects.
Dr. Sachin Patel, a psychiatry professor and researcher at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center remarked to Newsweek, “There really is a lack of good, high-quality evidence about cannabis and cannabis products as they relate to therapeutic benefits in pain.”
