Register-based studies on cannabis-based medicines and medical cannabis need reliable diagnoses and cannabis treatment details.

Abstract

This journal recently published a paper by Hjorthoj et al., entitled Cannabis-based medicines and medical cannabis for patients with neuropathic pain and other pain disorders: Nationwide register-based pharmacoepidemiologic comparison with propensity score matched controls (Hjorthoj et al., in press). The urgent need to accrue evidence for effect of cannabis-based medicines or medical cannabis (CBM/MC) in pain management is hindered by lack of high quality randomized controlled trials (RCTs), leading to divergent conclusions of systematic reviews and differing recommendations by national guidelines and position papers (Fischer et al., 2021; Petzke et al., 2021).