Cannabidiol products associated with beneficial effects on anxiety, pain and sleepResearch

Published 10 February 2022

Over-the-counter cannabidiol (CBD) products appear to improve pain, sleep, and anxiety disorders, preliminary research suggests.

Interim findings from the Advancing CBD Education and Science (ACES), a 100% virtual, open label, randomized controlled trial, show study participants experienced various degrees of "clinically meaningful" improvements in sleep quality, anxiety, and pain.

“ACES is the largest clinical trial ever conducted on commercially available CBD products and provides first-of-its-kind real world evidence into what conditions users may experience benefit from CBD usage, whether these benefits are clinically meaningful, what attributes of CBD products may impact health outcomes, and what side effects may occur,” study co-investigator Jessica Saleska, PhD, MPH, director of research at Radicle Science, the company that conducted the study, told Medscape Medical News.

Scant Evidence

Despite the growing market size of commercially available CBD products "there is still scant data on the effectiveness of over-the-counter cannabinoid products due to the cost, speed, and scale limitations of the current approach to scientific research," Jeff Chen, MD, MBA, co-founder and CEO of Radicle Science, told Medscape Medical News

One of the study's goals, said Ethan Russo, MD, a neurologist, founder/CEO of CReDO Science, and scientific advisor for Radicle, is to help consumers make informed decisions before purchasing and using commercially available oral CBD products. 

Designed to eliminate all physical infrastructure, which minimizes costs and facilitates faster execution, ACES was conducted much like a phase 4 clinical trial, collating real-world data gathered over 4 weeks.

"The process that Radicle scientists [have] advanced is sort of a crowdsourcing approach to doing clinical science," Russo said. "Hopefully, there is going to be a considerable amount of data generated that [will] affect people's buying options."

The study also aimed to evaluate product attributes, including composition, mode of use, dosage, dosage timing and frequency, and their correlation to degrees of outcomes.

Russo explained why product composition is an important factor, especially when dealing with CBD. "What happens with any given [CBD] preparation is going to be totally a function of other components, if any," he said. 

"For example, there's this mistaken notion that cannabidiol is sedating; it is not. Pure cannabidiol is stimulating in low and moderate amounts. Where the confusion has arisen is that the early chemovars containing cannabidiol were also predominant in myrcene, the sedating terpene, [thereby] creating this misimpression that it is good for sleep," he added.

However, CBD might also affect sleep by reducing anxiety that interferes with it. "What's clear is that cannabidiol is an anti-anxiety agent, if you have a sufficient dose," Russo said.

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Cite this: OTC Cannabidiol Products Tied to Improved Pain, Sleep, Anxiety - Medscape - Jan 24, 2022.