Medicinal Marijuana Eases Neuropathic Pain in HIV

Medicinal Marijuana Eases Neuropathic Pain in HIV – washingtonpost.com
WEDNESDAY, Aug. 6 (HealthDay News) — Medicinal marijuana helps relieve neuropathic pain in people with HIV, says a University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine study.

It included 28 HIV patients with neuropathic pain that wasn’t adequately controlled by opiates or other pain relievers. The researchers found that 46 percent of patients who smoked medicinal marijuana reported clinically meaningful pain relief, compared with 18 percent of those who smoked a placebo.

The study, published online Aug. 6 in Neuropsychopharmacology, was sponsored by the University of California Center for Medical Cannabis Research (CMCR).

“Neuropathy is a chronic and significant problem in HIV patients as there are few existing treatments that offer adequate pain management to sufferers,” study leader Dr. Ronald J. Ellis, an associate professor of neurosciences, said in an UCSD news release. “We found that smoked cannabis was generally well-tolerated and effective when added to the patient’s existing pain medication, resulting in increased pain relief.”

The findings are consistent with and extend other recent CMCR-sponsored research supporting the short-term effectiveness of medicinal marijuana in treating neuropathic pain.

Of course, you already heard this trumpeted on the evening news, right? You’ve probably heard so much about all these studies showing marijuana to have medical efficacy for neuropathic pain, right? Everybody knows that the news media loves to spray the marijuana stories all over the TV, radio, and newspapers, right?

Remember that study on marijuana being more potent than ever, or marijuana causing schizophrenia? We saw those repeated in one form or another over the span of two months from just about every media outlet in existence. Surely, this report, that finds something positive rather than negative about marijuana, will enjoy the same repeated airings and re-writes that the Drug Czar’s favorite stories get, right?

[cue crickets]

Yeah, that’s what I thought.