|
Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
|
|
Trials to test medicinal benefits to cannabis Sarah Boseley Reuters Monday 13 Dec 1999 LONDON - Trials of the medical benefits of cannabis for patients with multiple sclerosis are to be funded by the Medical Research Council. GW Pharmaceuticals, the drug company running the trials, says it hopes to have a cannabis-based medicine ready to be prescribed by doctors within three or four years. If its trials are successful, the Home Office is expected to change the law to allow prescription of cannabis-based medicine. The Medical Research Council (MRC) announced on Monday that it had awarded a grant of 950,000 pounds to Dr John Zajicek, of Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, for the three-year trials. "We hope the study will provide definite scientific evidence about whether or not taking cannabis is helpful to people with MS," Zajicek said in a statement. Sufferers from diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), which attacks the central nervous system, have been calling for a pain-relieving cannabis medicine for years and many have broken the law by buying the drug from street dealers. A small group of volunteers has been legally taking cannabis under clinical conditions in order to determine the best dose. The new MS study will involve 660 patients from across the country. Each patient will be randomly selected to receive capsules of either cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol, a constituent of cannabis, or a placebo. MS is an auto-immune disease in which the body's own immune system attacks and destroys a sheath which protects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. It affects about one million people worldwide and 85,000 people in Britain. There is no cure. The most common treatment is injections with beta-interferon.
After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.
|
This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.
Feel free to link to this page!