A UCSF study suggests patients with chronic pain may experience
greater relief if their doctors add cannabinoids - the main
ingredient in cannabis or medical marijuana - to an opiates-only
treatment. The findings, from a small-scale study, also suggest
that a combined therapy could result in reduced opiate dosages.
More than 76 million Americans suffer from chronic pain - more
people than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined,
according to the National Centers for Health Statistics. "Pain
is a big problem in America and chronic pain is a reason many
people utilize the health care system," said the paper's lead
author, Donald Abrams, MD, professor of clinical medicine at
UCSF and chief of the Hematology-Oncology Division at San
Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH). "And
chronic pain is, unfortunately, one of the problems we're least
capable of managing effectively." In a paper published this
month in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, researchers
examined the interaction between cannabi