NCT00254761

Effects of Smoked Marijuana on Neuropathic Pain

A Double Blind, Active Placebo Controlled Crossover Trial of the Antinociceptive Effect of Smoked Marijuana on Subjects With Neuropathic Pain; Correlation With Changes in Mood, Cognition, and Psychomotor Performance

• Status: Completed
• Phase: Phase 1 / Phase 2
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 28 (actual)
• Sponsor: Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 70 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

To determine if smoking marijuana will reduce neuropathic pain without causing too much drowsiness or feeling "too dopey".

Detailed description

The case for marijuana's medical use for pain is primarily from experimental studies with normal subjects, which have yielded conflicting results. Experimental subjects have been shown to have significant dose-dependant antinociception effect that is not reversed by opioid antagonism. In contrast to this positive antinociceptive effect, other experiments demonstrated hyperalgesic activity and probably enhancement of the perception of pain upon acute exposure in chronic users of marijuana. In addition to studying spontaneous pain antinociception, it would be useful to evaluate the response to marijuana following evoked pain. Such evoked pain is produced by stimulation of the skin that is normally not noxious. Because of the potential side effects of marijuana administration, one of the aims of the present study is to analyze inter-individual variability and the occurrence of dose-dependant analgesia of marijuana with an eye on defining tolerable dosing in clinical neuropathic pain syndromes. Comparisons: Neuropathic and experimentally induced pain scores will be compared after the administration of escalating doses of low, high, and placebo marijuana cigarettes as provided by the National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

Conditions

• Neuropathic Pain

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DRUG	Cannabis

Timeline

• Start date: 2003-11-01
• Primary completion: 2006-02-01
• Completion: 2006-02-01
• First posted: 2005-11-17
• Last updated: 2008-02-28

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States