Patients with generalized anxiety disorder show improvements with medical cannabis

The goal of this study was to evaluate clinical outcomes of medical cannabis on patients diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). It was published in the journal Psychopharmacology (Berlin) in June 2023.

This observational study included 302 patients enrolled in the UK Medical Cannabis Registry who were prescribed cannabis oil or flower. About 69% of the patients were male and the average age was 37. 46% used vaporized cannabis flower only while 29.5% used cannabis oil only. The rest used both flower and oil.

The GAD-7 anxiety screener was used to quantify anxiety changes. The GAD-7 questionnaire was administered 4 times - before treatment (baseline) and at 1, 3, and 6 months. While 302 patients started the study, only 94 completed the 6 week follow-up.

They also measured changes in patients' sleep quality and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) via standard questionnaires at the same time points.

In the UK, doctors may only prescribe medical cannabis for individuals with conditions that have not been "satisfactorily relieved by licensed therapies". So ALL these patients had previously tried traditional anxiety disorder treatments with little success.

Dosing for patients was primarily THC dominant products with a median of 20mg THC per day (range: 19mg to 40mg per day). The CBD dosing median was 2mg per day (range: 0.1mg to 20mg per day).

General results: 

Improvements in anxiety, sleep quality and quality of life were observed at each time point (p < 0.001).

 

Rifkin-Zybutz R, Erridge S, Holvey C, Coomber R, Gaffney J, Lawn W, Barros D, Bhoskar U, Mwimba G, Praveen K, Symeon C, Sachdeva-Mohan S, Rucker JJ, Sodergren MH. Clinical outcome data of anxiety patients treated with cannabis-based medicinal products in the United Kingdom: a cohort study from the UK Medical Cannabis Registry. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2023 Aug;240(8):1735-1745. doi: 10.1007/s00213-023-06399-3. Epub 2023 Jun 14. PMID: 37314478; PMCID: PMC10349732.

(source: Rifkin-Zybutz R, Erridge S, Holvey C, Coomber R, Gaffney J, Lawn W, Barros D, Bhoskar U, Mwimba G, Praveen K, Symeon C, Sachdeva-Mohan S, Rucker JJ, Sodergren MH. Clinical outcome data of anxiety patients treated with cannabis-based medicinal products in the United Kingdom: a cohort study from the UK Medical Cannabis Registry. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2023 Aug;240(8):1735-1745. doi: 10.1007/s00213-023-06399-3. Epub 2023 Jun 14. PMID: 37314478; PMCID: PMC10349732.) 

Adverse events reported:

  • Dry mouth (8.3%)
  • Insomnia (6.3%)
  • Somnolence (5.3%)
  • Lethargy (5.3%)
  • Nausea (5.3%)

2% of the patients reported the insomnia as severe.

The authors' concluded:

Prescription of CBMPs [cannabis based medical products] in those with GAD is associated with clinically significant improvements in anxiety with an acceptable safety profile in a real-world setting.

 

The full text article is here at PubMed Central.

 

 

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