Marijuana use may relieve HIV-related nerve pain

A study presented Wednesday at the 11th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections shows that smoking marijuana may relieve diffuse nerve pain, or polyneuropathy, in HIV-positive people, Reuters Health reports. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, tested marijuana use among 14 HIV-positive men who had experienced polyneuropathy for an average of six years. The men, who used the drug three times daily, reported their pain on a scale from 1 to 100 at an average of 20 at the end of the seven-day study, down from an average score of 47 at the study's launch. Researchers are now enrolling 50 patients for a new study to compare patients who receive marijuana to those who receive a placebo.