The National Football League has awarded $1 million to two medical research teams — including one at UC San Diego — to research the impact of cannabis and CBD on pain management and recovery from sports- related injuries, it was announced Tuesday.
UCSD and the University of Regina in Canada were selected among 106 submissions for research proposals executed by the NFL-NFLPA Joint Pain Management Committee, with UCSD's team to assess the therapeutic potential for cannabis for "relief of post-competition soft-tissue injury pain in elite athletes."
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The study will be done on professional rugby players.
Dr. Mark Wallace is the head of the UC San Diego Division of Pain Medicine. He explained how the study will be set up.
“One of the treatments is THC alone, 4 percent; one is CBD alone, 12 percent; the third is a combination of the two; and then the fourth one is placebo,” Wallace said. “They're going to be blinded and then they will dose themselves with that particular arm for 48 hours. And then they go on to the next competition.”
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Wallace said rugby players suffer injuries similar to those of football players and the trial is more feasible with rugby athletes due to the legal use of cannabis in their professional leagues.
He expects the actual study to begin in 9 to 12 months time and said the athletes will inhale vaporized doses of cannabis flower following game-related injuries.
“Now in the future, I think we would hopefully want to do edibles. But at this stage, inhalation is the best delivery method so we know we are getting the concentrations that we want,” Wallace said.
Wallace said their outcomes will be monitored via remote phone apps and part of the study will even include blood sampling.
He believes cannabis will prove to be a better pain remedy than what’s currently used in the NFL.
“A very high percentage of professional athletes have been exposed to opioids. And many of them continue on opioids after they retire. And that's one of the reasons why I think the NFL is interested in this. Because they know professional athletes are using this, but there’s no science behind it, “ Wallace said.
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While no conclusions can be drawn until the study is completed, investigators believe the THC and THC/CBD combinations will prove to be the superior treatments.
"Our team is excited to receive this funding to conduct a systematic, `real-world, real-time' study with professional athletes, and which should shed further light upon the many anecdotal reports that cannabis is helpful in reducing post-competition pain," Wallace said.
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According to a UCSD Health statement, the initial trial will not only evaluate pain relief and recovery, but also any effects on physical function, sleep, cognition and mood.
"An innovation of this research is using a `real-world model' of the NFL's competitive injury burden with a group of elite athletes who experience similar injuries," said Thomas Marcotte, professor of psychiatry at UCSD School of Medicine. "It's a first-of-its-kind randomized trial to examine the possible practical efficacy of cannabinoids on post-competition pain."
