STUDY: POT USE SAFE FOR HIV PATIENTS

Advocates Hopeful UCSF Researcher's Work Will Pave Way For Medical Use Of
Marijuana

DURBAN, South Africa - The first U.S. study using medical marijuana for
people with HIV has found that smoking the plant does not disrupt the
effect of antiretroviral drugs that keep the virus in check.

The results were announced Thursday at the 13th International AIDS
Conference and are the first to be released from research conducted at San
Francisco General Hospital into the use of marijuana by people infected
with HIV. Given the scarcity of data about the possible medical uses of
marijuana, the results have been eagerly awaited by advocates in this
heavily debated issue.

It took four years for UC San Francisco professor Donald Abrams to jump
through hurdles erected by the federal government to get the research under
way, and in the process he was restricted to focusing on marijuana's safety
rather than its effectiveness. The 67 people who participated in the study
were kept in the hospital during the 25-day study period.

"The fact of the matter is that any good clinician with his eyes and ears
open has known for a long time that cannabis is very useful in the
treatment of the AIDS reduction syndrome and does not harm patients," said
Dr. Lester Greenspoon, [sic] professor of psychiatry at Harvard University
and author of "Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine."

"When all the dust settles, and when marijuana is admitted to the U.S.
pharmacopoeia, it will be seen as one of the least toxic drugs in the whole
compendium. What Don (Abrams) has done is put the seal of approval on a new
drug with his double blind study."

Researchers were especially keen to study people on drug regimes that
contain protease inhibitors, because the key ingredient in marijuana is
metabolized by the same system in the liver as those drugs.

The participants, nearly all men, were divided into three groups, with one
set smoking marijuana, another taking a Food and Drug Administration
approved pill containing marijuana's main ingredient, and a third taking a
placebo pill.

In all groups, tests showed that the level of virus in the blood dropped or
remained undetectable by current tests.

But those taking marijuana either by smoking or in a pill form saw their
level drop slightly more than those on the placebo.

Furthermore, researchers found that those using the pill or smoking
marijuana gained an average of 2.2 kilograms, compared to .6 kilograms in
the placebo group.

Marijuana was first used widely by people with AIDS to combat the nausea
and extreme weight loss that comes with the disease.

Abrams called the lower viral levels in the marijuana patients intriguing,
but said it was not statistically significant.

"The good news is that there is no statistical difference between the three
groups," he said.

"Now that we've demonstrated the safety in a population as vulnerable as
people with HIV, I think it paves the way for doing studies of efficacy,"
Abrams said.

Indeed, Abrams, an oncologist, said he hopes to soon begin studying the use
of smoked marijuana for cancer patients to see if it can control nausea and
pain, including the nerve-based pain that is often beyond the reach of
opiate painkillers like morphine.

Abrams said he expects to release more results from the study soon,
including marijuana's effect on appetite, testosterone levels and body
composition.

Eric Brazil of The Examiner staff contributed to this report.