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Pot pain study aims to answer safety concerns - 150 Edmontonians could be part of national review
By: Andy Ogle, Edmonton Journal (CN AB), 12-09-04

EDMONTON - Thousands of Canadians legally use marijuana to treat their pain, but to date there has been no assessment of whether the practice may actually be more harmful than helpful.

Now a national study, in which an Edmonton pain specialist is participating, is being launched to study safety issues surrounding the medical use of marijuana.

"There are a lot of people legally using it at the moment and they will be willing, I think, to take part in this study for us," Dr. Helen Hays said Tuesday.

"Most of my patients really want to help others," said Hays.

"People say it helps, but that's very anecdotal. The way people are using it now is very unscientific and we do need a lot more studies that would help us understand what kinds of pain, what the dangers are, and this kind of thing. But it's extremely hard to do these studies."

Hays said one study she's keen to do would involve making marijuana cookies and comparing them with cookies without marijuana. But so far she has had no luck getting funding for it. It's intent would be to see if ingesting marijuana some other way rather than smoking it is also helpful in relieving pain.

"I'm always hard on my patients who continue to smoke and we do know that the smoke is pretty toxic, worse than tobacco smoke," Hays said.

As her part of the study, which includes six other centres across the country, Hays will enrol 50 patients a year for three years in her clinic at the Meadowlark Place Professional Centre. Not all will use marijuana, with some serving as a control group, matched for similar medical conditions.

All patients will be followed for a year. Typical patients in the study are those with chronic pain from such things as spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, arthritis or other hard to treat pain.

Co-ordinated out of the McGill University health centre, the study will enrol a total of 1,400 patients. Of those, 350 will use marijuana as part of their pain management. The researchers will look for such things as adverse events and any changes in kidney, liver, heart and lung function and hormone levels. Patients will also do tests at the beginning and end of the study to help determine whether medical use of cannabis affects cognitive function. The study is not intended to assess the effectiveness of marijuana in alleviating pain, as other studies on that aspect are underway.

Marijuana used in the study will be produced by Prairie Plant Systems Inc. in Saskatchewan under contract to Health Canada. The strain to be used contains about 12 per cent THC, the active ingredient.

For more information go to www.gereq.net/compass. To enrol in the study call toll free to 1-866-302-4636.