Hope For Fibromyalgia Sufferers, Cannabis Linked To Improved Symptoms & Less Opioid Use In UK Study

People who live with the pain, nausea, anxiety, depression and other symptoms of fibromyalgia also live with the sad fact that there’s no cure and not a single drug to treat this condition that affects 3% to 5% of the world's population and 3.5 million people in the U.S. alone. There may be many more, but we don't know because there's no diagnostic test to definitively detect it. 

As such, treating the symptoms is the name of the game for fibromyalgia. To that end, patients turn to a mix of individual medications, therapies and lifestyle changes (such as exercise) to ease symptoms and improve their lives.

In addition to anti-depressants, analgesics, opioids and muscle relaxers, cannabis has been found to address mood, pain and more all at once with far fewer side effects.

It’s not a new idea but new research keeps coming in.

According to recent observational data published in the journal Brain and Behavior, British researchers assessed the safety and efficacy of plant-derived cannabis products (either oil, flower or a combination) in over 300 fibromyalgia (FM) patients enrolled in the UK Medical Cannabis Registry who had a doctor’s authorization to access cannabis products. The authors assessed the efficacy of cannabis at one, three, six, and 12 months. Since 2018, British specialists have been allowed to recommend cannabis-based medical products to fibromyalgia patients unresponsive to conventional medications.

What The Researchers Found

“Statistically significant improvements [were] observed in validated fibromyalgia-specific, pain, sleep, anxiety, and health-related quality of life metrics. Furthermore, a statistically significant reduction in opioid consumption was seen at the end of [the] follow-up," researchers reported. "CBMPs [cannabis-based medicinal products] were generally well-tolerated.”

The scientists concluded that “CBMP treatment was associated with improvements in fibromyalgia-specific symptoms, in addition to sleep, anxiety, and health-related quality of life. … Subgroup analysis suggests that those with prior exposure to cannabis were likely to experience improvements in more domains, as well as fewer adverse events, [as] compared to cannabis-naïve counterparts.”

Fibromyalgia patients frequently self-report using cannabis to successfully manage their symptoms. An Israeli study published last November also reported that cannabis therapy is associated with quality-of-life improvements in FM patients who have previously failed to respond to conventional prescription medications.