This Trial Will See if Cannabis Can Treat Long Covid
The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved a six-month clinical trial to investigate whether medical cannabis can treat long Covid.
The trial will be undertaken in the UK by the independent group Drugs Science UK and the medical cannabis company Bod Australia Limited.
Thirty participants will be recruited and given daily doses of the medical cannabis product MediCabilis, which is produced by Bod Australia Limited.
The hope is that the product will be able to treat several symptoms of long Covid, including fatigue, chronic pain, anxiety, and insomnia.
Long Covid on trial
Long Covid is a term to describe the persistent symptoms that can remain weeks, months, and even years after an initial Covid infection.
These symptoms can include debilitating fatigue, an irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath, joint pain, chest pain, a continuous cough, and Sjögren's syndrome, an autoimmune condition that causes dry eyes and a dry mouth. In turn, these exhausting symptoms can lead someone living with long Covid to develop other conditions, such as insomnia, anxiety, and depression.
As clinical research has only begun to scratch the surface of the condition, there are currently few agreed-upon therapies for long Covid. Any drug proven to treat long Covid symptoms, therefore, would be highly prized.
With the hopes of securing such a drug, Bod Australia has organized its clinical trial with Drug Science.
“Upon completion of the trial and pending successful results, Bod will embark on the commercialization of a MediCabilis product which can be used to treat the condition,” the company wrote in a press release.
Bod Australia and Drug Science are currently seeking 30 people living with long Covid to take part in the trial. These recruits will then be given MediCabilis to take daily over six months. Each participant will undergo daily assessments of their symptoms via a smartphone app. The results will be used to determine whether or not the medical cannabis product had any effect on the recruits’ symptoms.
“While there aren’t any existing treatments for long-COVID, our medicinal cannabis products have been used to treat and alleviate a number of similar conditions,” Bod Australia’s CEO Jo Patterson said in a statement.
“We anticipate that this clinical trial will provide us with great insight into its potential to treat long-COVID and build on the body of evidence for the use of cannabis-based medicines, in place of other pharmaceuticals.”
