Around half of us have chronic (meaning long-term) medical conditions. These conditions are often associated with symptoms such as pain, problems with sleeping, and mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. There is now a great deal of data to show that for many people with these symptoms, medical cannabis can be a safe and effective treatment. Much of my recent book, “Medical Cannabis, A Brief Guide for New Zealanders”, discusses the evidence for the effectiveness of medical cannabis.
Now, adding to this, recently published data from a huge Australian study confirms that the real-world effects of prescribed medical cannabis mirror the results found in smaller clinical research studies.
The data from Australia is from the QUEST Initiative, a 12-month follow-up observational study. In Australia, patients have been able to access medical cannabis from clinicians since 2016 and since then over 1 million people have received medical cannabis prescriptions for over 200 health conditions.
The QUEST initiative is a huge study that assessed patients with chronic health conditions who were prescribed medical cannabis. Data was collected from over 2,300 patients, during and after 12 months of treatment, in the form of a series of health questionnaires, covering symptoms including pain, fatigue, sleep disturbance, anxiety, depression, and overall Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQL).
In this study 69% of participants were receiving medical cannabis for pain, 23% for insomnia, 22% for anxiety and 11% for combined anxiety and depression. Interestingly, half of the patients had been prescribed medical cannabis for more than one condition.
In terms of overall Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQL), on average there was a very good improvement seen at 3 months of treatment, and this was maintained at 12 months. Similar improvements were found in patients with chronic pain, sleep disturbance for participants with insomnia and, for both depression and anxiety scores in patients with mental health issues.
Evidence to support the use of any medical treatments is stronger if the same or similar results are found in multiple studies, and the researchers in Australia point out that the results found in their study correlate closely with those from similar studies which have been undertaken in the UK, Canada and Israel.
There are different types of medical cannabis products of course, and one of the findings from this study was that the degree of improvement in fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, and depression symptoms did vary depending on the ratio of CBD and THC in the prescribed products.
On average products with more THC than CBD were associated with greater chances of the patient having an improvement in depression, sleep, and fatigue.
Products with more CBD than THC were associated with greater chances of the patient having an improvement in anxiety.
For musculoskeletal pain, headache pain and cancer-related pain, products with more CBD than THC were better than balanced or CBD-only products.
For patients whose daily activity was affected by pain, improvements occurred irrelevant of the cannabinoid ratios.
Overall, this very large, important study, undertaken in the country closest to New Zealand, confirmed that medical cannabis can be very helpful for many patients who experience problems with pain, sleep and mental health as a result of common chronic medical conditions.