Smoked cannabis as an adjunctive second-line therapy to treat chronic peripheral neuropathy can be both effective and cost-effective. The results of a new study simulating its use in one million patients are published in Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

In the article David Grelotti, MD, University of California San Diego (La Jolla) and coauthors from UCSD, University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (San Diego), and Columbia University (New York, NY) created a computer simulation to compare the cost of usual first-, second-, and third-line care with those supplemented with smoked cannabis. They modeled efficacy and adverse events based on clinical trial and other existing study data, and derived cannabis cost from retail market pricing.

"With the opioid crisis continuing unabated, it is essential to understand whether cannabis might offer a safe, effective, and economically sound approach to pain management. This article offers new data that will help evaluate this possibility," says Editor-in-Chief Daniele Piomelli, PhD, PharmD, University of California-Irvine, School of Medicine.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 1TL1TR001443. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Griffin A Tyree, Reith Sarkar, Brandon K Bellows, Ronald J Ellis, Joseph Hampton Atkinson, Thomas D Marcotte, Mark S Wallace, Igor Grant, Yuyan Shi, James D Murphy, David J Grelotti.
A Cost-Effectiveness Model for Adjunctive Smoked Cannabis in the Treatment of Chronic Neuropathic Pain.
Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research. doi: 10.1089/can.2018.0027.