Clinical outcomes of the first cohort of patients captured in the UK Medical Cannabis Registry are encouraging.
One of the arguments against medical cannabis is the lack of quality evidence supporting its use. This is rapidly changing, with a bunch of studies being carried out around the world. One of the sources of good quality and comprehensive observational data are formalised patient registries.
Initiated by clinicians at Sapphire Medical Clinics, the UK Medical Cannabis Registry is the first database of its kind in the UK. It’s designed to collate outcomes on medical cannabis prescribing. The data it captures includes prescribed formulations, adverse events and patient-reported outcomes. Anonymised data is made available on request to the medical community for analysis.
Sapphire says the Registry will:
“.. greatly contribute to the body of clinical evidence whilst we await randomised clinical trials. It will provide an invaluable resource to guide health policy for the NHS and other health systems.”
A study has been recently published based on the clinical outcomes of the first 129 patients enrolled in the Registry.
What has been found is statistically significant improvements in anxiety, pain, sleep and general quality of life scores at the points of 1- and 3-months following treatment with cannabis medicines. Additionally, the study indicated cannabis-based medicinal products (CBMPs) to be relatively safe in the short to medium-term.
“We are very pleased to see the first peer reviewed publication of outcomes of medical cannabis patients since legalisation in print, which suggests that these treatments are safe and well tolerated in this patient group,” said Head of Research and Access at Sapphire Medical, Dr Simon Erridge.
Sapphire’s Managing Director and Academic Lead Dr. Mikael Sodergren also welcomed the study being published, but said the findings need to be treated with caution given the limited scope of what was an initial analysis that does not involve a placebo or active comparator. An active comparator design compares a drug to another commonly used medication for the same indication.
The full study report has been published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology Reports and can be viewed here.
