Fact or fiction: prescribing medicinal cannabioids in endometriosis patients in Australia

Australian study has revealed important issues in cannabioid use in endometriosis

Key Points

Highlights

• Various reports exist worldwide indicating that endometriosis patients use cannabinoid-based medicinal products as well as illicit preparations for symptomatic relief.

Importance:

• It is a well-known fact that legal medicinal cannabis products are used by endometriosis patients, but, due to their expensiveness, people often reduce their dosage, or resort to the illicit products available.

What's done here:

• This is an online cross-sectional study on costs, modes of administration, product composition, and self-reported effectiveness of medicinal cannabis among Australian endometriosis patients.

Main key feature :

• Self-reported reductions in pain and several other symptoms, access to medicinal cannabis for endometriosis patients is important and timely.

Limitations of the study:

• Diagnosis, cost, and product consumption were all self-reported and could not be confirmed due to the anonymity of the survey.
• Recruitment via social media and the characteristics of the patient base may produce recall and selection bias necessitating caution when extrapolating the results to all endometriosis communities.
• Active ingredients delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) were accepted as appeared on different manufacturers' certifications.

Lay Summary

A team of academic institutions from Australia has published their cross-sectional study on cannabis usage in endometriosis patients which has appeared in the recent issue of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

As victims of a chronic inflammatory ailment, endometriosis patients have been using cannabinoid-based medicinal products as well as illicit preparations for symptomatic relief worldwide.

Though legal medicinal cannabis products are being used by endometriosis patients commonly, there is a high cost of prescription necessitating dosage reductions, or even resorting to illicit products available in their communities.

This online cross-sectional study aimed to determine who Australian endometriosis patients source their cannabinoid products from, what products are prescribed, the active pharmaceutical ingredients consumed, methods of administration, effectiveness, and costs.

The study confirmed that delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol predominant medicinal products are commonly prescribed to Australians with endometriosis, and multi-product use is frequent.

Since these legal cannabinoid prescriptions are expensive, patients frequently reduce their dosage, or even try to get illicit products.

With positive issues in symptom management and reductions in pain as well as other symptoms, improving access to medicinal cannabis for endometriosis patients seems to be important and also timely.

Research Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38415783/