MEDICAL MARIJUANA: STUDY FINDS PAIN- KILLING BENEFITS
Researchers announced yesterday "that active chemicals foundThis is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.
in [marijuana] could serve as an effective remedy for the
millions who suffer serious pain each year, without the unwanted
side effects of more traditional morphine-like drugs,"
Los Angeles Times reports. The findings were reported yesterday
in New Orleans to the Society for Neuroscience by a group of
researchers from the University of California-San Francisco, the
University of Michigan and Brown University. The researchers
announced that new animal studies had demonstrated that "a group
of potent chemicals known as cannabinoids, which include the
active ingredient in marijuana, relieve several kinds of pain,
including the kind of inflammation associated with arthritis, as
well as more severe forms of chronic pain." The new research
also found that "[unlike] the current crop of painkillers based
on opiates, the new class of chemicals is not addictive, nor does
it appear to carry the risk that patients may develop tolerance
for it and require increasing doses."
HOW IT WORKS
In the experiments, scientists "used both the active
ingredient in marijuana -- a chemical called delta-9-THC -- as
well as an array of more powerful synthetic creations" and traced
the biochemical pathway that pain takes through the nervous
system. They found that delta-9-THC is designed in such a way
that in can readily bind to a variety of receptors. In fact,
Medical College of Virginia researchers "now suspect that
naturally occurring cannabinoids may govern the body's basic
threshold of pain." J. Michael Walker of Brown University
explained that cannabinoids "stop pain before it ever enters the
spinal cord." Another researcher, Kenneth Hargreaves of the
University of Texas, presented evidence that "the marijuana-like
chemical can relieve the inflammation associated with arthritis
when injected directly at the site of an injury." And the
chemicals in marijuana can be used to help alleviate pain due to
nerve diseases and spinal cord injuries, reported University of
Minnesota researcher Donald Simone.
MARIJUANA, SERIOUSLY
The Times reports that the researchers' new findings
concerning marijuana will "inevitable broaden the drug's appeal
beyond those seriously ill patients who seek it out today to
stimulate appetites destroyed by wasting diseases like AIDS or to
alleviate the nausea of chemotherapy." Walker said, "There is a
long history of human use of cannabis to control pain; science
has lagged behind for a lot of reasons." Researchers said that
the new evidence "may spur broader federal support" for
marijuana's analgesic effect. "[I]f we could fund more research
in this area, we would have a greater opportunity to take drugs
that are more selective and more potent," said Hargreaves.
However, the researchers said that new findings "will result not
in a new generation of pot smokers, but in a range of new pills,
topical ointments and injectable pain-control drugs based on the
natural chemistry of marijuana." Most of today's painkillers,
such as aspirin which is derived from willow bark, come from
plants, notes the Times (Hotz, 10/27).