POT PAIN STUDY AIMS TO ANSWER SAFETY CONCERNS

150 Edmontonians Could Be Part Of National Review

EDMONTON - Thousands of Canadians legally use marijuana to treat their
pain, but to date there has been no assessment of whether the practice may
actually be more harmful than helpful.

Now a national study, in which an Edmonton pain specialist is
participating, is being launched to study safety issues surrounding the
medical use of marijuana.

"There are a lot of people legally using it at the moment and they will be
willing, I think, to take part in this study for us," Dr. Helen Hays said
Tuesday.

"Most of my patients really want to help others," said Hays.

"People say it helps, but that's very anecdotal. The way people are using
it now is very unscientific and we do need a lot more studies that would
help us understand what kinds of pain, what the dangers are, and this kind
of thing. But it's extremely hard to do these studies."

Hays said one study she's keen to do would involve making marijuana cookies
and comparing them with cookies without marijuana. But so far she has had
no luck getting funding for it. It's intent would be to see if ingesting
marijuana some other way rather than smoking it is also helpful in
relieving pain.

"I'm always hard on my patients who continue to smoke and we do know that
the smoke is pretty toxic, worse than tobacco smoke," Hays said.

As her part of the study, which includes six other centres across the
country, Hays will enrol 50 patients a year for three years in her clinic
at the Meadowlark Place Professional Centre. Not all will use marijuana,
with some serving as a control group, matched for similar medical conditions.

All patients will be followed for a year. Typical patients in the study are
those with chronic pain from such things as spinal cord injuries, multiple
sclerosis, arthritis or other hard to treat pain.

Co-ordinated out of the McGill University health centre, the study will
enrol a total of 1,400 patients. Of those, 350 will use marijuana as part
of their pain management. The researchers will look for such things as
adverse events and any changes in kidney, liver, heart and lung function
and hormone levels. Patients will also do tests at the beginning and end of
the study to help determine whether medical use of cannabis affects
cognitive function. The study is not intended to assess the effectiveness
of marijuana in alleviating pain, as other studies on that aspect are underway.

Marijuana used in the study will be produced by Prairie Plant Systems Inc.
in Saskatchewan under contract to Health Canada. The strain to be used
contains about 12 per cent THC, the active ingredient.

For more information go to www.gereq.net/compass. To enroll in the study
call toll free to 1-866-302-4636.