Study: Medical cannabis is effective for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients

"Users reported that cannabis is moderately to highly effective in treating several symptoms and that adverse effects are not generally severe"

This study was published in the journal Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders in January 2022. It received detailed info from 215 patients that were currently using, or had previously used medical cannabis.

79.3% of the participants had relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS), while 10.5% had secondary progressive MS (SPMS). 10.2% either had primary progressive MS (PPMS) or did not know their diagnosis. The average age was about 45, and over 75% of the participants were women.

The main administration methods used:

Ingestibles (tea, baked goods, beverages, candy/mints/chocolate) (36%)
Concentrates (sublingual oil droppers or sprays, capsules) (30.7%)
Smoked or vaporized dried flower products (26.9%)
A very small percentage used extracts (hash, distillate, isolate, shatter/budder/diamonds/badder/hydrocarbon extracts) or prescription drug formulations

Medical cannabis was used primarily to treat:

Sleep problems (84.2%)
Pain (80.0%)
Spasticity (68.4%)

The reported adverse side effects listed were:

drowsiness
feeling quiet/subdued
difficulty concentrating

Almost 75% of the current users reported using cannabis products daily. And 74% learned about medical cannabis from someone other than a healthcare provider. This is quite discouraging given the positive results of this, and many other MS studies.

The original paper is here at the journal's web site, msard-journal.com.

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