Philadelphia, PA: The initiation of cannabis therapy is associated with self-reported improvements in patients with chronic migraines, according to data presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the American Headache Society.
Researchers affiliated with the Jefferson Headache Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia evaluated the efficacy of marijuana use for patients with migraines. Patients used cannabis as needed over a nine-month period.
Investigators reported that cannabis therapy was associated with a reduction in patients’ use of other anti-migraine medications. A majority of patients also reported reductions in anxiety and improvements in sleep. On a scale of one to ten, 20 percent of subjects rated marijuana’s efficacy in treating migraine as a ten.
Separate data published in the June edition of the journal Brain Sciences reported that the inhalation of cannabis long-term was associated with reductions in migraine frequency. Another study, published in 2019 in the Journal of Pain, reported that “inhaled cannabis reduces headache and migraine severity ratings by approximately 50 percent.”
Additional information on cannabinoids and migraine is available online from NORML.