Photo Credit: Julia Teichmann |
In cannabis trials against pain, people who take placebos report feeling largely the same level of pain relief as those who consume the active cannabinoid substance. Still, these studies receive significant media coverage regardless of the clinical outcome, report researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden in a study published in JAMA Network Open.
“We see that cannabis studies are often described in positive terms in the media regardless of their results,” says the study’s first author Filip Gedin, postdoc researcher at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet. “This is problematic and can influence expectations when it comes to the effects of cannabis therapy on pain. The greater the benefit a treatment is assumed to have, the more potential harms can be tolerated.”
The study is based on an analysis of published clinical studies in which cannabis has been compared with placebo for the treatment of clinical pain. The change in pain intensity before and after treatment were the study’s primary outcome measurement.
The analysis drew on 20 studies published up to September 2021 involving almost 1,500 individuals.