A New Zealand-born doctor, now residing in Australia, and an advocate for medicinal cannabis use, is ringing the alarm bells when it comes to cannabis use while also on immunotherapies.
Dr Ben Jansen has written an editorial in the New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ) entitled ‘Are cannabinoids with cancer immunotherapy contributing to early death? A call for caution and further study.
Dr Jansen notes that the use of cannabis (medical or otherwise) impacts the effectiveness of immunotherapies. Such therapies are used for many cancers, including breast cancer, lung cancer, renal cancer, and many more.
It appears that cannabinoids may be suppressing the immune system, consequently rendering any immunotherapy being used useless or much less effective.
Probably the best-known immunotherapy pharmaceutical in New Zealand is Keytruda (with its technical name being Pembrolizumab). There are other immunotherapy drugs as well, and you can identify them by their suffix, which is, typically -mab.
As the push continues by pro-drug advocates to increase access to cannabis and other drugs, it is important to remind people again that there is no good quality research around the effects of cannabis on users. This itself raises questions of how we have even reached a place where cannabis is being prescribed when its safe use is not understood.
Dr Jansen, even as someone who supports cannabis use as part of his medical practice, notes that until there is a better understanding of how cannabis and immunotherapy interact, people – doctors, patients, users – must proceed with much greater caution.
*Written by Family First staff writers
