Press Release

Findings demonstrate key differences in demographics and choice of medical cannabis product between patients with cancer and without cancer

NEW YORK, March 26, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Columbia Care LLC, one of the nation’s leading medical cannabis companies, today announced the peer-reviewed publication of research in collaboration with New York University (NYU) Department of Medicine and Rehabilitation Medicine demonstrating key differences in demographics and medical cannabis product use between patients with cancer and without cancer in the Journal of Palliative Medicine.

“While cancer is a qualifying condition for nearly all U.S. states’ medical cannabis programs, there is a scarcity of data on patterns of medical cannabis use in patients with cancer,” commented Arum Kim, M.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Rehabilitation Medicine, Director of Supportive Oncology at NYU Langone's Perlmutter Cancer Center, and first author of the study. “We are grateful to Columbia Care for allowing us to utilize its expansive dataset, and we believe the current study is a promising starting point for generating robust scientific data on cancer patients’ use of medical cannabis. We are hopeful that our findings can help cancer patients, as well as their physicians, better understand what medicinal formats and doses might work best for their particular qualifying symptoms and overall needs.”

Rosemary Mazanet, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board at Columbia Care added, “We are privileged to collaborate with Dr. Kim and her team at NYU, and we believe this research is essential to furthering our understanding of how medical cannabis can help both cancer and non-cancer patients. We believe this present dataset is only the initial step into understanding how our products can help patients with cancer, and we are looking forward to continuing our collaborations with renowned medical institutions such as NYU to truly understand how our products can help patients with a wide range of qualifying conditions and symptoms. We believe that Columbia Care is the best, and one of the only qualified, medical cannabis companies to participate in such rigorous peer-reviewed research due to our unparalleled ability to develop highly-consistent, pharmaceutical-quality products.” 

The peer-reviewed study utilized Columbia Care’s vast, anonymized datasets to analyze how demographic information and qualifying conditions and symptoms are associated with medical cannabis use. Key study highlights from the paper entitled, “Patterns of medical cannabis use among cancer patients from a medical cannabis dispensary in New York State,” include:

• The most common medical cannabis qualifying symptom for both cancer and non-cancer patients in New York was severe or chronic pain, with 86.1% of cancer patients and 70.0% of non-cancer patients identifying severe or chronic pain as their primary qualifying symptom.
• Medical cannabis patients with cancer were more likely to be female (55.4% vs. 49.5%) and more likely to be older (mean age 60.2 years vs. 52.1 years) than medical cannabis patients that did not have cancer.
• Medical cannabis patients with cancer were more likely to use the sublingual tincture medicinal format (55.2%), whereas non-cancer patients were more likely to use the vaporization form (44.0%).

About Columbia Care LLC
Columbia Care is one of the nation’s largest and most experienced manufacturers and providers of medical cannabis products and services. Columbia Care has completed more than 750,000 sales transactions since its inception and is working in collaboration with some of the most renowned and innovative teaching hospitals and medical centers in the world. Columbia Care is a patient-centered healthcare company setting the standard for compassion, professionalism, quality, caring and innovation for a rapidly expanding new industry focused on providing the transparency and education patients need with the product quality clinicians and consumers expect. For more information on Columbia Care, please visit www.col-care.com.

Media Contact:
Josephine Belluardo, Ph.D.
LifeSci Public Relations
+1.646.751.4361
jo@lifescipublicrelations.com

Released March 26, 2019