My old Professor of surgery once told me that if several treatments were available for a disease, it meant that non of them worked very well! However, the latest suggestion for the treatment of Crohn’s disease may come as a pleasant surprise to some patients.
In a paper in the October issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, a group from Israel report a study in which patients with CD who had responded very poorly to standard pharmacological treatment were put into a controlled trial. They were asked to smoke either cannabis in the form of a cigarette twice daily or a placebo made from cannabis flowers from which the active agent had been extracted. The trial lasted for 8 weeks and they were followed up two weeks after treatment finished.
Symptomatic remission occurred in 5 of 11 subjects on active treatment and only 1 of 10 in the placebo group. This difference was not statistically significant and they all relapsed during the two weeks after stopping the cigarettes and no tests were done to provide objective proof that the CD inflammation was under control. Perhaps they just felt better!
Taking a drug by smoking is obviously potentially risky and there would be serious upsets if the cigarettes were to fall into the wrong hands! Although, the patients who were prescribed the active cigarettes enjoyed smoking them and felt much better, it seems likely to be a long time before this treatment becomes available on the NHS!
This article was first published on the original crohns.org.uk blog. Research has moved on since, so please check current advice with your IBD team.