Clinical trial of cannabis recruits MS sufferers

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Sarah Boseley

Guardian

Tuesday 14 Dec 1999

The first clinical trial of cannabis in relieving the pain and
symptoms of multiple sclerosis is to go ahead, following approval and
a grant of £950,000 from the medical research council.

The three year study will be run by John Zajicek, a consultant
neurologist at Derriford hospital in Plymouth, but the 660 MS patients
involved will be from all over the country.

"We hope the study will provide definite scientific evidence about
whether or not taking cannabis is helpful to people with MS," said Dr
Zajicek.

It will be the first time people with a medical condition will have
been prescribed cannabis. Many MS sufferers claim the drug helps
relieve some of the symptoms, such as muscle stiffness and spasms, as
well as the pain. The patients, ones with significant spasticity in
some leg muscles, will be recruited from hospital MS clinics. They
will not smoke the drug but swallow a capsule of either extract of
cannabis or a constituent called tetrahydrocannabinol, or be given a
placebo.

Multiple sclerosis is the most common neurological disease affecting
young adults in the western world and there are estimated to be about
85,000 with the disease in Britain.

Peter Cardy, chief executive of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, said:
"For years we have pressed for proper medical research. Thousands of
people with MS suffer from the often very painful symptoms of
spasticity [spasms]. "It is clearly an unacceptable state of affairs
when many people suffering from a serious medical condition feel
driven to break the law."

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society, which helped develop the protocol
for the trial, welcomed the news.

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