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Marijuana Helps MS Patients Alleviate Pain, Spasms
Publication date: Mon Aug 19, 2002
Source: Reuters Health
Author: Kathleen Doheny
SAN DIEGO (Reuters Health) - Cannabis, or marijuana, is an effective
drug that can help patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) to reduce
debilitating pain and muscle spasms, according to a London researcher
who presented his findings Sunday at the 10th World Congress on Pain.
"So many of our patients told us they use cannabis," said Dr. M. S.
Chong, a neurologist at King's College Hospital, London, that he and his
colleagues decided to study its effectiveness and how widespread the use
of it is among MS patients.
While a Scottish study recently reported that about 8% of MS patients
use cannabis, Chong's team found that about 43% of 100 MS patients who
answered their questionnaires did so. Of those, 53% said they began to
use it after the diagnosis was made. Of those who never used it, 76%
said they would do so if the drug were legalized.
About half the patients who tried marijuana continued to use it
regularly to relieve symptoms. They did so, they said, because it works.
Nearly three quarters of current users said it worked to relieve spasms;
more than half said it helped to relieve pain.
Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, often debilitating disorder of the
central nervous system. Symptoms vary from numbness of the limbs to
paralysis, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Up to
55% of those with MS suffer pain, muscle spasms or both, Chong says.
"The more disabled the patient, the more likely they were to use it,"
Chong said. To evaluate disability, Chong's team used a well-respected
and validated disability scale. The level of disability was the
strongest association with marijuana use, he noted, while he found no
association between subjects' use of cigarettes and alcohol and the use
of marijuana.
About one third of the patients worked full- or part-time; 69% were
married or cohabiting. The sample was 75% women and 25% men.
The MS patients did not necessarily abuse marijuana. "A lot of patients
said they would just take one dose, at night," Chong stated. But he is
not certain if a dose meant an entire joint or not.
How does it work? "We really don't know," Chong said, but it probably
"enhances our endogenous cannabinoids." Cannabinoid receptors in the
brain have been discovered recently, and were the subject of another
Congress presentation, but their roles are just beginning to be
revealed.
The patients who tried marijuana were also on conventional drugs for
pain relief and spasm relief, Chong added. "I think it basically shows a
lot of our conventional drugs are not very good."
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Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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