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  UCSF Study Finds No Harm to HIV+ Patients
Posted by CN Staff on August 18, 2003 at 16:42:48 PT
For Immediate Release 
Source: EurekAlert 

medical UCSF researchers found no harmful changes in HIV virus levels in patients on combination antiretroviral therapy in a safety study looking at both smoked marijuana and dronabinol, an oral medical cannabinoid.

"People with HIV are a vulnerable population, so successfully addressing the safety concerns allows us to move on to effectiveness studies, three of which are currently underway here," said study author Donald Abrams, MD, professor of clinical medicine in the UCSF Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center (SFGHMC).

The findings, which appear in the August 19, 2003 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, mark the first publication of a randomized, controlled study involving medical marijuana in a major peer-reviewed journal in several years.

Sixty-two HIV-infected patients on antiretroviral regimens containing a protease inhibitor completed the 25 day inpatient study. Patients were randomized to three groups--20 received smoked marijuana, 22 received dronabinol, and 20 received an oral placebo.

The study measured changes in HIV virus levels in blood (rising levels tend to indicate disease progression) and CD 4 and CD 8 T lymphocyte cell counts. These disease- fighting white blood cells are essential for defending against infections and are targeted and destroyed by the HIV virus.

The study investigated whether cannabinoids would alter the levels of the virus either by changing the levels of the protease inhibitor medication or by a direct effect on the immune system. Fifty-eight percent of the participants entered the study with levels of HIV virus circulating in their blood below the limit currently detectable by the usual tests. They ended the study with no change in their undetectable status. In all three arms, patients with detectable levels of virus saw no change in the levels of HIV in their blood over the three-week study period.

There was no significant change in CD 4 or CD 8 T-cell counts for the placebo group over the course of the study. CD 4 T-cell counts rose by about 20 percent for both the smoked marijuana and the dronabinol group. CD 8 T-cell counts rose by 20 percent in the smoked marijuana group and by 10 percent in the dronabinol group.

"The change in lymphocyte counts for the smoked marijuana group is intriguing. At a minimum, it contradicts findings from previous studies suggesting that smoked marijuana suppresses the immune system," said Abrams.

While not the primary objective of the study, weight gain was observed in all three groups, possibly due to regularly scheduled meals and snacks. Statistically significant weight gain occurred in both the smoked marijuana and the dronabinol arms compared with the placebo arm, though the gain was fat, not in the desired lean body mass compartment.

Co-authors of the study are Joan F. Hilton, DSc, MPH, UCSF associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics; Roslyn J. Leiser, RN, clinical nurse, Starley B. Shade, MPH, senior statistician, Steven G. Deeks, MD, UCSF associate professor of medicine, and Thomas F. Mitchell, MPH, program director, all in the UCSF Positive Health Program at SFGHMC; Tarek A. Elbeik, PhD, UCSF associate researcher in laboratory medicine at SFGHMC; Francesca T. Aweeka, PharmD, UCSF professor of clinical pharmacology; and Neal L. Benowitz, MD, UCSF chief of the division of clinical pharmacology and vice chair of the department of biopharmaceutical sciences.

Also, Barry M. Bredt, MA, specialist, and Morris Schambelan, MD, UCSF professor of medicine and director, General Clinical Research Center at SFGHMC; Bradley Kosel, PharmD, visiting postdoctoral scholar in clinical pharmacology at UCSF; Judith A. Aberg, MD, associate professor of medicine at Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.; Kathleen Mulligan, PhD, UCSF associate professor of medicine at SFGHMC; and Joseph M. McCune, MD, PhD, UCSF professor of medicine at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology.

The study was supported by a research grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a part of the National Institutes of Health, which also supplied the marijuana cigarettes for the trial. The dronabinol and placebo were supplied by Roxane, Inc., Columbus, Ohio.

Complete Title: UCSF Study Finds No Harm to HIV+ Patients with Short-Term Medical Cannabis

Contact: Jeff Sheehy: jsheehy@psg.ucsf.edu
Phone: 415-597-8165
University of California - San Francisco

Source: EurekAlert
Published: August 18, 2003
Copyright: 2003 American Association for the Advancement of Science
Contact: jsheehy@psg.ucsf.edu
Website: http://www.eurekalert.org/

Related Article & Web Site:

Medical Marijuana Information Links
http://freedomtoexhale.com/medical.htm

Marijuana Use Does Not Accelerate HIV Infection
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17092.shtml

CannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archives
http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml


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Comment #10 posted by goneposthole on August 19, 2003 at 18:58:03 PT
traumatization vs. incoherence
I think our whole society tries to stabilize itself by starting out to destroy sensitivity to incoherence starting with very young children. If people could see the vast incoherence that is going on in society they would be disturbed and they would feel the need to do something. If you're not sensitive to it you don't feel disturned and you don't feel you need to do anything. I remember an instance, a daughter was telling her mother, "this school is terrible, the teacher is terrible, very inconsistent, doing all sorts of crazy things," and so on. Finally the mother was saying, "You'd better stop this--in this house the teacher is always right." Now she understood that the teacher was wrong obviously, but the message was, it was no use. Even the message may have been right in some sense, but still it illustrates that the predicament is that in order to avoid this sort of trouble, starting with very young children, we are trained to become insensitive to incoherence. If there is incoherence in our own behavior, we thereby also become insensitive to it. --David Bohm, seminar on Thought and Dialogue in Ojai, November 4, 1989

http://www.ratical.org/koya.html

music has a lot to do with it, too.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #9 posted by E_Johnson on August 19, 2003 at 08:20:39 PT
The coming age of understanding
I have a lot of feelings about the mainstream science establishment as everyone can tell.

The medical marijuana struggle has required a struggle to inform and thus evolve the mainstream in science and medicine.

Ultimately this will be better for science and medicine.

The things being revealed about cannabinoids through science are revolutionary and require a change in thinking about human beings on a social, political, religious and biological level.

Traumatization has been a really important force in history, to say the least.

Everywhere evidence is popping up that endocannabinoids protect humans from traumatization, from becoming stuck in a traumatic consciousness that relives and obsesses over wounds and fears and hurts and insults.

I think we're also becoming informed through the humanities that traumatization is a political force, that traumatization is used to make people powerless and that traumatic conscioiusness drives the quests for domination and retribution that make conflict oin this world so hard to manage.

Now we are coming upon the time when the knowledge of human hurt and pain in the humanities will finally merge with the growing knowledge of traumatic consciousness in science.

And cannabis and cannabinoids will be there in the nexus.

Human society has been held back in many ways by the traumatic consciousness.

Cannabinoids are more important than I ever realized. This has been such an awakening. Eventually everyone will share it.

But this awakening will take time because of the preconceptions and biases that are inherent in modern American science.

Through integrated interdisciplinary cannabinoid research, we humans are going to know ourselves and our weaknesses as we never have before.



[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #8 posted by FoM on August 19, 2003 at 07:58:22 PT
Related Article
Short-Term Effects of Cannabinoids in Patients with HIV-1 Infection

A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial

Text: http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/139/4/258

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #7 posted by goneposthole on August 19, 2003 at 07:17:08 PT
The doctored science of Ernest Haeckel
Evidence for Evolution - Embryology: (ex) Embryos of different vertebrates look alike in their early stages, giving the superficial appearance of relationship. (crit) Embryos of different vertebrates DO NOT look alike in their early stages. "This idea was fathered by Ernest Haeckel, a German biologist who was so convinced that he had solved the riddle of life's unfolding that he doctored and faked his drawings of embryonic stages to prove his point." (William R. Fix, "The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution," 1984, p. 285.) Haeckel was exposed as a fraud in 1874 by Professor Wilhelm His. Nevertheless, Haeckel's fraudulent drawings (or similar representations) remain in high school and college biology textbooks to this day as evidence for evolution.

http://www.evidence-for-evolution.com/

"The change in lymphocyte counts for the smoked marijuana group is intriguing. At a minimum, it contradicts findings from previous studies suggesting that smoked marijuana suppresses the immune system," said Abrams.

The scientists of the previous studies may suffer from 'Ernest Haeckel syndrome'. Such a pity to be such a fool. Corn is medicine, now, but not cannabis. When will all of the fraud be not exposed, but admitted?



[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #6 posted by Lehder on August 19, 2003 at 06:33:53 PT
Big money! Big money!
Where have I heard that before? Wheel of Fortune?

"When a big corporation stands to make billions and provide lots of jobs for PhDs -- then American scientists are so FOR plant-based medicine that being against it gets one accused of being against science itself.

There really truly are consequences for the racial and gender and social class bias in science, and one of the consequences is people suffering in prison doing hard time having their lives destroyed for being non-corporate bio-pharmers.... "

This is an incisive and striking observation that deserves a wide purview. It makes a powerful comparison that ought to influence people and perhaps cause some who count to happily discover a deficiency in outlook. I'd like to see it disseminated, for example, as an lte to Scientific American or Harpers when an appropriate article appears.

Of course Pat and Vanna will always have the final word.



[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #5 posted by Rev Jonathan Adler on August 18, 2003 at 23:15:00 PT:

Coooperative Research- Phase Three in Hawaii?
God Bless Dr. Donals Abrams, a good hearted professional researcher commited to high quality studies and results. We discussed a possible collaboration to do a "phase three" study in Hawaii to prove better quality medicine got better research results for the applications approved. We of course at the Hawaii Medical Marijuana Institute desire to provide legal quality materials to researchers like Donald. I hope you will pursue this idea soon, Doctor Abrams. Lester Grinspoon also told me directly that someday my project would get approvals and be this country's first high-grade research done domestically. I hope so. see www.medijuana and contact us for information or to give support. Thanks again. Rev. Jonthan Adler

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #4 posted by E_Johnson on August 18, 2003 at 20:38:01 PT
Just HOW hypocritical is American science??
Here's from the lead story in Salon on biopharming:

"Earlier this year, Wiley learned that Meristem Therapeutics, a biotechnology company based in France, wants to test a new sort of genetically modified corn in Colorado soil. The company's crop produces proteins that can be used to manufacture lipase, an enzyme used in the treatment of digestive disorders. Optimistic backers say this corn and other "pharmaceutical" crops could one day provide cheaper, more accessible treatments for maladies ranging from the life threatening to the merely annoying. They say pharmaceutical crops might also open lucrative markets to the nation's struggling small farmers."

********************************************

Pharmaceutical crops -- plants that produce medicine.

Mmmmmmmmmmm... where have I heard about that before? (scratching head)

When a big corporation stands to make billions and provide lots of jobs for PhDs -- then American scientists are so FOR plant-based medicine that being against it gets one accused of being against science itself.

There really truly are consequences for the racial and gender and social class bias in science, and one of the consequences is people suffering in prison doing hard time having their lives destroyed for being non-corporate bio-pharmers getting medicine from a plant that has been genetically designed through human-plant coevolution.



[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #3 posted by freedom fighter on August 18, 2003 at 17:51:56 PT
Proven beyond any reasonable doubt!
Marijuana is safe for patients with HIV...

Likewise, it is safe for the "normal" healthy bodies...

Johnny can suck his green crack(never heard of that drug) now. Spread the news far and wide!

paz

ff

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #2 posted by Ethan Russo MD on August 18, 2003 at 17:01:45 PT:

A Couple of Points
In the Chronic Use Study, we also showed no change in CD4 counts in the Compassionate Use IND patients:

http://www.cannabis-med.org/jcant/russo_chronic_use.pdf

The Wade-Robson study of cannabis-based medicine extract in MS patients was also an RCT (randomized controlled trial):

http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/wr.pdf

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #1 posted by FoM on August 18, 2003 at 16:59:03 PT
Related Article from ABC7News.com
Study: Marijuana Not Harmful To HIV Patients

Aug. 18 — For years some doctors believed smoking marijuana could be harmful to the immune system of people with HIV. Now, a new UCSF study disputes that.

The study shows that those who took anti-HIV medication and smoked marijuana saw no change in their health.

Richard Apodaca takes a battery of anti-HIV medication to keep the disease in check.

Richard Apodaca: "For me it's like taking chemotherapy everyday."

Medical marijuana helps Apodaca deal with the side effects of the drug cocktails such as nausea and loss of appetite.

Richard Apodaca: "It soothes me enough that allows my system to accept all these drugs and get them in my system and I can get my day going."

For years, Apodaca and others have worried about the effects of medical marijuana on the immune system.

A UCSF study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that medical marijuana is safe for HIV and AIDS patients and the marijuana did not interfere with the effectiveness of the drugs.

Dr. Donald Abrams, author of study: "Marijuana smoking in patients with HIV did not do any harm. It didn't change the level of the virus in their bloodstream, it didn't interfere with the drugs they were taking, and didn't suppress their immune system."

Sixty-two HIV patients were studied over 21 days. Three times a day, some smoked or took an oral kind of cannabis, others were given a placebo.

This research has now opened the door to others studies on how medical marijuana can help patients cope with certain diseases.

Dr. Donald Abrams, author of study: "Now that we've shown that marijuana is safe in patients with HIV we're looking to see if it is effective. The first study we are doing is patients with HIV and pain in their hands and feet."

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/news/081803_nw_hiv_pot.html

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