Oral CBD or THC+CBD shown to be effective for chronic pain

This study included over 2,000 pain patients in Columbia and was conducted between May and September 2021. It was published in Frontiers in Pain Management in March 2022.

It was an observational retrospective cohort study which means it was derived from patients self-reporting (observational) their clinical outcomes. Researchers analyzed the data after (retrospective) it was collected from patients (as part of their treatment) by the Latin American Institute of Neurology and Nervous System (ILANS-Zerenia) in Bogotá, Colombia.

76% of the participants were female with an average age of 59 years old. Overall, 92.5% (1,955 patients) reported some improvement in their primary symptom (p < 0.001). The average improvement reported was about 55% (± 25%, p < 0.001).

Two single cultivar (strain), full-spectrum, oral cannabis concentrate formulations containing either mostly cannabidiol (CBD 30 mg/mL; THC <2 mg/mL) or a balanced formula (THC 12 mg/mL; CBD 14 mg/mL) accounted for more than 99% of all prescriptions (59.5 and 39.8%, respectively).

The average daily dose of THC consumed by patients treated with the balanced (CBD & THC) concentrate ranged between 9.4 and 17.4 mg per day (which means about the equivalent amount of CBD, too), and the average dose of CBD for patients treated with CBD-dominant concentrate ranged from 25.6 to 48.5 mg per day (and a very small amount of THC).

• "Our results constitute the first real-world evidence on the clinical use of medicinal cannabis in Colombia and suggest that cannabis-based oral magistral formulations represent a safe and efficacious adjuvant therapeutic option in the management of chronic pain."

The full text article is here at Frontiersin.org.