A new study has found that patients with chronic health conditions experienced significant improvements in their overall quality of life and reductions in fatigue after three months of using medical marijuana. The study, which analyzed responses from over 2,300 Australian patients, also noted improvements in anxiety, depression, and chronic pain among participants.
The study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, focused on patients eligible for the QUEST Initiative, a large prospective multicenter study of patients newly prescribed medicinal cannabis. The participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 97 years, with a mean age of 51. The majority of participants were female.
Chronic pain was the most common condition reported by participants, followed by insomnia, anxiety, and anxiety/depression. Half of the patients reported having more than one condition.
Before starting cannabis therapy, participants completed baseline surveys to assess various aspects of their health-related quality of life (HRQL), including pain, sleep, fatigue, anxiety, and depression. They then received follow-up surveys after two weeks of treatment and once a month for three months.
The study found that participants who completed three months of treatment reported improvements in their overall health-related quality of life compared to their pre-treatment baseline. However, those who only completed the first follow-up assessment showed less improvement. Patients with a chronic pain diagnosis experienced greater improvements in pain measures compared to those without pain treatment.
While sleep patterns did not improve among respondents with an insomnia diagnosis, fatigue levels did decrease significantly. On the other hand, depression scores shifted from moderate severity to the mild severity range but did not reach the threshold for clinically meaningful improvement. However, participants diagnosed with specific depression health conditions showed more marked improvement.
Anxiety scores also demonstrated significant improvement trends over time but did not reach the level of clinically meaningful improvement except among those with diagnosed anxiety conditions.
According to the research team behind the study, these findings should be interpreted in the context of a single-arm study without a control group. They noted that there is a chance some of the reported improvements could be due to the placebo effect, as patients’ expectations may have been influenced by public discussions on the benefits of medicinal cannabis.
The study will continue to follow patients over a 12-month period to determine if the improvements in patient-reported outcomes are sustained long-term. Further subgroup analysis will also be conducted to compare outcomes among patients with specific conditions using validated condition-specific questionnaires.
In Australia, medical cannabis is highly regulated, but access is allowed for patients with health conditions that do not respond to conventional treatment. The government also recently rescheduled psilocybin and MDMA for narrow treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and treatment-resistant depression.
While the study’s findings are encouraging, it is important to note that further research is needed to fully understand the effectiveness of medical marijuana in treating chronic health conditions. Nonetheless, this study adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting potential benefits of medical marijuana for patients with chronic illnesses.
