Hindu Kush vapor is shown to be effective for UK pain and anxiety patients

This study used a single cultivar of cannabis flower and studied its effectiveness in reducing anxiety and chronic pain in 344 patients in the UK. It was published in October 2022 in the journal Biomedicines.

The cultivar is made by Khiron Life Sciences and is called Khiron 20/1, which represents the amounts of THC and CBD in the dried flower, 20% THC and <1% CBD. It is well-known that this cultivar is commonly called Hindu Kush in the broader market.

The authors specify the product name (Khiron 20/1), but they do not provide terpene profiles for the flower products used. Typically, Hindu Kush is Limonene dominant with a-Pinene and Caryophyllene as the next terpenes by weight. But growing conditions and many other factors affect individual harvest terpene profiles significantly, even with the same cultivar.

The study "analyzes patient-reported outcome measures (PROMS) collected by T21 [Project Twenty21] associated with the inhalation of KHIRON 20/1, the most prescribed CBPM [cannabis-based products for medicinal use in humans] in the project."

77% of the patients were male with an average age of 38. They reported their results between August 2020 and June 2022 and had at least one 3-month follow up.

Patients predominantly used a portable flower vaporizer (Storz&Bickel Mighty Medic). They were instructed to set their devices at 180C to start and experiment with different temperatures up to 200C (356F to 392F). Their dosing protocol was very specific:

Our results indicate that controlled inhalation of pharmaceutical grade, THC-predominant cannabis flos [dried flower] is associated with a significant improvement in patient-reported pain scores, mood, anxiety, sleep disturbances and overall HRQoL [health-related quality of life] in a treatment-resistant clinical population.

Inhalation of KHIRON 20/1 was associated with a marked increase in self-reported HRQoL, general mood, and sleep.

Condition-specific assessments showed significant improvements in pain severity in patients using KHIRON 20/1 for chronic pain.

Similar results were found for patients diagnosed with anxiety-related disorders 

The full text paper is here at MDPI.com.