Plymouth, United Kingdom: Britain’s Medical Research Council (MRC) has agreed to fund a three-year clinical trial to examine the long-term benefits of cannabinoids on multiple sclerosis-related disability.
The trial, which will involve 500 patients, is a follow up to a 2003 study that found MS patients gained significantly greater relief from disabling symptoms after one year of cannabinoid therapy (either oral THC or a cannabis extract) than they did after 15 weeks.
“Currently very few medicines are effective in treating MS and none have been shown to have any effect in the later stages of the disease,” said John Zajicek of the Peninsula Medical School at the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, who will oversee the trial. “If [this] study demonstrates that cannabinoids do have a longer term effect on the progression of disability, there are potentially far-reaching implications, not only for the health of people with MS, but also for those with other neurodegenerative conditions.”
In addition to symptom management, recent clinical data indicates that cannabinoids may slow down the neurodegenerative processes that lead to MS and similar chronic diseases. A review of this literature appears in the current issue of the Journal of the Neurological Sciences.
For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Senior Policy Analyst, at (202) 483-5500.