Home > UK Medical Cannabis registry: an analysis of clinical outcomes of medicinal cannabis therapy for chronic pain conditions.

Harris, Michael and Erridge, Simon and Ergisi, Mehmet and Nimalan, Devaki and Kawka, Michal and Salazar, Oliver and Ali, Rayyan and Loupasaki, Katerina and Holvey, Carl and Coomber, Ross and Usmani, Azfer and Sajad, Mohammed and Hoare, Jonathan and Rucker, James J and Platt, Michael and Sodergren, Mikael H (2022) UK Medical Cannabis registry: an analysis of clinical outcomes of medicinal cannabis therapy for chronic pain conditions. Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, 15, (4), pp. 473-485. doi: 10.1080/17512433.2022.2017771.

External website: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512...

OBJECTIVES: To explore pain-specific, general health-related quality of life (HRQoL), and safety outcomes of chronic pain patients prescribed cannabis-based medicinal products (CBMPs).

METHODS: A case series was performed using patients with chronic pain from the UK Medical Cannabis Registry. Primary outcomes were changes in Brief Pain Inventory short-form (BPI), Short-form McGill Pain Questionnaire-2 (SF-MPQ-2), Visual Analogue Scale-Pain (VAS), General Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), Sleep Quality Scale (SQS), and EQ-5D-5L, at 1, 3, and 6 months from baseline. Statistical significance was defined at p-value<0.050.

RESULTS: 190 patients were included. Median initial Δ-tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol daily doses were 2.0mg (range:0.0-442.0mg) and 20.0mg (range:0.0-188.0mg) respectively. Significant improvements were observed within BPI, SF-MPQ-2, GAD-7, SQS, EQ-5D-5 L index, and VAS measures at all timepoints (p<0.050). Seventy-five adverse events (39.47%) were reported, of which 37 (19.47%) were rated as mild, 23 (12.11%) as moderate, and 14 (7.37%) as severe. Nausea (n=11; 5.8%) was the most frequent adverse event.

CONCLUSION: An association was identified between patients with chronic pain prescribed CBMPs and improvements in pain-specific and general HRQoL outcomes. Most adverse events were mild to moderate in severity, indicating CBMPs were well tolerated. Inherent limitations of study design limit its overall applicability.


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