Marijuana Shown to Relieve HIV Nerve Pain

Voice of America ^ | Feb 16th, 2007 | Rose Hoban

[cryptical]

The cannabis plant has been used as a medicine for thousands of years. In the United States, doctors could prescribe marijuana cigarettes to patients for a variety of conditions until the 1940s, when it was banned. Marijuana's status as an illegal drug has removed it from the official medical arsenal, but its therapeutic power is still attracting attention, especially its pain-killing properties.

About 30 percent of HIV patients develop painful nerves during the course of their illness, and this neuropathy is extremely difficult to treat with standard pain medications. Dr. Donald Abrams, of the University of California at San Francisco, studied the use of marijuana for relief of their discomfort. "We've known for along time that cannabinoids, the active ingredients in marijuana, can be involved in modulation of pain and the response to pain," he explains, adding that the body has its own cannabinoid system. "We make natural substances called endo-cannabinoids and it's felt that one of the main roles of these endo-cannabinoids is in our processing of painful stimuli." Abrams studied 50 patients who had suffered nerve pain for an average of 7 years. He gave half actual marijuana cigarettes to smoke three times a day, the other half smoked placebo cigarettes. He found the patients smoking the marijuana had significantly greater pain relief, and it was almost immediate. "After smoking the first cigarette on the first day," he recalls, "we asked patients what had happened to their pain. Those smoking the actual marijuana cigarette, their pain reduced 75 percent; where those smoking the placebo, their pain reduced less than 20 percent." These results were consistent throughout the study.

Abrams says there is a pill on the market containing the most active ingredient of marijuana, called tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. But he says smoking the actual plant works better than taking the pill, because THC is only one of the components present in the plant. "The plant has over 400 chemical compounds, many of which also have medicinal value. Many of those compounds in the plant also offer a balance to the side effects of the THC alone. So when you take a pill that's just THC, some people have more adverse effects than actually smoking THC as part of marijuana."

The research appears in the February 13th issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

[cryptical]

Interesting research for Medical Marijuana. I know of at least one patient that uses marijuana to control pain from MS, this research seems to confirm the usefulness.

[trumandogz]

Bring on the Drug Warriors.

[Lexington Green]

Why do we continue to criminalize the sick, dying, and lame for using medical pot? Because they're so easy to catch?

[caisson71]

No, because the medical marijuana laws are so full of loopholes that it has less to do with relief of pain and suffering than it does to allow the continued illegal growing and selling of the illegal substance.

[Chena]

Why do we continue to criminalize the sick, dying, and lame for using medical pot? Because they're so easy to catch?

No. It's because some people are just too ignorant and/or stubborn to believe the medical research that has shown time and time again that marijuana is a valuable medicinal plant. For the life of me I do not understand how someone could be so cruel or uncaring towards the sick to think that they have the right to withhold medicine because they, in their self-righteous glory, don't happen to "approve" of it.

[voltaires_zit]

> For the life of me I do not understand how someone could
> be so cruel or uncaring towards the sick to think that
> they have the right to withhold medicine because they, in
> their self-righteous glory, don't happen to "approve" of
> it.

The answer may lie here:

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness -- to bring him down to the miserable level of "good" men, i.e., of stupid, cowardly, and chronically unhappy men.
-- H L Mencken, Alistair Cooke, ed., The Vintage Mencken

[Chena]

Ah, but patients who are benefiting from medical marijuana find it has MORE "to do with relief of pain and suffering than it does to allow....."

I can't imagine denying someone who is ill the right to medicine that could help them because somewhere in the world someone else is abusing that same medicine.

Look at some of the drugs being prescribed for pain these days (and all of the side effects and addictive qualities that go with them) being used these days. There are people who have legitimate prescriptions for those drugs and then there are those who are out stealing those drugs and selling them on the street. Does this mean we should make it illegal for ANYONE to use those pain pills? Of course not. That'd be ridiculous.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

It's not the happiness that bothers me - it's the externalities. The HIV prevalent lifestyles offload lots of costs onto more responsible citizens (read taxpayers). If we could opt out of paying for their lifestyle I would have no problem with them smiling and rump riding into oblivion.

[RJL]

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness -- to bring him down to the miserable level of "good" men, i.e., of stupid, cowardly, and chronically unhappy men.

If they have a "superior capacity for happiness" what is the marijuana for?

[secretagent]

"Puritanism: The haunting idea that someone, somewhere, might be happy."

Oscar Wilde

[robertpaulsen]

"Bring on the Drug Warriors."

You rang?

" He gave half actual marijuana cigarettes to smoke three times a day, the other half smoked placebo cigarettes."

I don't smoke marijuana. No secret there. But even I could tell the difference between marijuana and a placebo just by the smell alone. The "study" is a joke.

"But he says smoking the actual plant works better than taking the pill"

Yeah, doing a study using Marinol (the THC pill) and a placebo wouldn't be fair, now would it? Oh, Dr. Donald Abrams has long been associated with the movement to legalize drugs.

"Dr. Kenneth P. Mackie, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Washington, has devoted 15 years to studying the brain's response to cannabinoids through specialized brain receptors called CB1 and CB2. "There's a whole bunch of theoretical reasons suggesting there would be a benefit for marijuana on a variety of conditions relating to pain and neuroinflammation," Dr. Mackie said. "But the clinical studies just aren't there."

[voltaires_zit]

> The HIV prevalent lifestyles offload lots of costs onto
> more responsible citizens (read taxpayers).

While this study was done on HIV+ people, I was referring to those who are opposed to the use of marijuana as medicine generally.

> If we could opt out of paying for their lifestyle I would
> have no problem with them smiling and rump riding into
> oblivion.

I'd love to opt out of paying for all the destruction tobacco and obesity have caused to the public purse, too, as long as we're looking down on the sick for being weak willed, stupid and self destructive.

That OK with you?

[Psycho_Bunny]

Personally, I'm skeptical and wondering if there's not an agenda here. 

I've never experienced a pain that was alleviated by pot.  In some cases, pot makes it far worse: severe toothaches, for instance. Getting stoned while having a toothache, or most types of headache, is like stubbing your toes on a couch and then getting a charlie horse in your foot.

While I've never experienced the pain described in this article, my experience with pot and other types of pain leads me to believe this story is BS.

[voltaires_zit]

> But even I could tell the difference between marijuana
> and a placebo just by the smell alone.

The placebo was denatured (THC removed) marijuana. Unless you can tell the difference between decaf and real coffee by the smell, I doubt you'd have noticed the difference here.

> The "study" is a joke.

No, the study is the crack in the dike of decades of drug hysteria that blocked honest study of the question.

[secretagent]

The HIV prevalent lifestyles offload lots of costs onto more responsible citizens (read taxpayers). If we could opt out of paying for their lifestyle I would have no problem with them smiling and rump riding into oblivion.

Of course better to eliminate tax-funded welfare of all kinds, but within the current system, legalized marijuana would cost very little, compared to other pain medications.

[Popocatapetl]

Just saying, "idopathic neuropathies", or irritated and damaged nerves, especially in the extremities, without known cause, are becoming a lot more common these days.

Often what happens is a degeneration of the myelin sheath, the "insulation" that protects nerves. But this is not the only cause.

What happens is usually tingling and pain in the hands and feet turns to numbness that works its way inward. In the feet is it often associated with "dropfoot", where the foot does not bend up normally when walking, the toes dragging, causing the individual to stumble. This is becoming very common in older people, recognizable because they have to wear a calf brace, attached to a plate underneath the foot, holding their foot up.

[Tolsti]

I bet heroin or even euthanasia in extreme terminal pain would be more effective of removing pain.

[robertpaulsen]

"For the life of me I do not understand how someone could be so cruel or uncaring towards the sick"

For the life of me, I do not understand how anyone can use the sick and dying as pawns in their quest to legalize marijuana. Smoked marijuana is not medicine. It's a scam. No major medical organization supports it.

Why is marijuana so special that we're expected to make an exception for it and not treat it as we would any other drug? Study it. Trial it. Publish peer-reviewed reports. List drug interactions, dosages, frequency. Get FDA approval. Have a physician prescribe it through a pharmacy.

AS WE DO WITH EVERY OTHER DRUG.

What is wrong with that? I'd really like to know.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Marijuana also contributes to immune deficiency...

So, the use of marijuana in AIDS treatment would have an adverse affect on an autoimmune deficiency syndrome...


"There's a sucker born every minute." (P.T. Barnum)

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Marijuana also contributes to immune deficiency...

So, the use of marijuana in AIDS treatment would have an adverse affect on an autoimmune deficiency syndrome...