Minnesota (USA) - A study published in the Journal of Oncology Practice found that cancer patients enrolled in the Minnesota Medical Cannabis Program showed improvement in symptoms such as pain relief after four months of medical marijuana use and nausea.
The study's authors, conducted in collaboration with the Minnesota Department of Health, monitored 1.120 cancer patients who received cannabis through the state's medical cannabis program.
743 of these patients returned for their next supply of medical marijuana and reported remarkable improvements among all eight symptom categories that the researchers followed. For example, median pain scores on a 10-point scale decreased from 8 to 6,7. In addition, the number of patients with maximum pain scores of 10 dropped from nearly 25% to less than 10% over the same period.
Safer Than Opioids?
However, struggles with sleep and depression did not go away. Dr. Dylan Zylla, a study author from HealthPartners Nicollet's Oncology Research Center, believes the results are encouraging, especially when it comes to replacing addictive opioid painkillers. However, addiction isn't the only concern that comes 'pre-loaded' with long-term opioid use. There is ample evidence that opioids can help prevent some cancers can not be purchased promote. So, cannabis may be one of the safest methods to relieve cancer symptoms.
The reason there 'can not be purchased'has been used in the sense above is that more research is needed to confirm that cannabis does not interfere with the effectiveness of chemotherapy and impairs survival.
However, the study has limitations. First, it had no way of isolating cannabis from other treatments that may have relieved symptoms. Second, the study had the potential for response bias because it was largely based on the progress in patients who came back for refill.
Nearly 1/3 of the patients did not return for refills, meaning they died or lost their lives from cancer, or in some other accident.
In particular, the study did not mention the types of cannabis that worked best.
Read the full article at HuffsnPuffs.com (EN, source)
