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Smoking marijuana modestly reduced pain and other symptoms of chronic neuropathic pain, results of a small trial showed.
The most potent dose used reduced average daily pain scores by 0.7 points on an 11-point scale, according to Mark A. Ware of McGill University in Montreal, Canada and colleagues.
Those who smoked weed with 9.4 percent of the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) also reported sleeping better, the researchers reported online in CMAJ.
These results are important in light of the fact that patients who hear about pain relief from ongoing publicity about medical marijuana have had only a "trickle" of evidence to prove it, explained Henry J. McQuay of Oxford University in an accompanying editorial.
"If medical cannabis is not available where a patient lives, then obtaining it will take the patient outside of the law, often for the first time in his or her life," he wrote. "Good evidence would at least buttress that decision."
