Study: CBD + morphine is better than morphine alone for pain

This study investigated the effect of a treatment combination of CBD and morphine on evoked (result of a stimulus or injury) and ongoing neuropathic pain in rats and is scheduled for publication in October 2022 in the journal Behavioral Brain Research.

The pain model used was chronic constriction injury (CCI) of the sciatic nerve in rats.

They found that CBD and morphine by themselves exhibited antinociceptive pain effects on evoked pain, but the combination of 30mg/kg CBD and 1mg/kg morphine produced better pain-reducing effects than morphine alone. For a 70kg human, the equivalent dose would be 2100mg CBD and 70mg morphine. They also found that CBD helped reduce morphine tolerance.

Treatment with morphine (2 and 4 mg/kg) or CBD (30 mg/kg) induced a significant antinociceptive effect on evoked pain.

treatment with CBD partially attenuated morphine-induced tolerance.

Taken together, the present results demonstrate that CBD or morphine exert antinociceptive effects in both mechanically evoked pain and ongoing pain after CCI in rats. 

In summary, our results support the indication of CBD as an adjuvant to opioid therapy for the attenuation of NP and opioid-induced analgesic tolerance.

The abstract and selected snippets are here at ScienceDirect.com.