Efficacy and tolerance of the cream containing structured physiological lipids with endocannabinoids in the treatment of uremic pruritus: a preliminary study
Open-label, no control groupHumansTopical
- Design
- Open-label, no control group
- Subjects
- 21 people on maintenance haemodialysis with uraemic pruritus, who completed the trial
- Dose used in the study
- A cream with structured physiological lipids (Derma Membrane Structure) containing endogenous cannabinoids, applied twice daily
- Duration
- 3 weeks, with a follow-up visit 2 weeks after stopping
- What was measured
- Itch, on a visual analogue scale and a separate questionnaire score, and dry skin (xerosis) on a 5-point scale, scored weekly.
What the authors reported
This trial found:
- Itch was completely gone in 8 of 21 patients (38.1%) by the end of treatment.
- Both itch scales fell significantly over the 3 weeks (P < 0.0001).
- Dry skin cleared completely in 17 of 21 patients (81%), with a significant fall in xerosis scores (P = 0.0001).
- There was no significant link between how dry a patient's skin was and how severe their itch was at the start of the trial.
- The cream was well tolerated by all patients.
Limits of this study
Open-label, with no control cream or placebo arm, in a small group of 21 patients from one dialysis unit. The cream contains several lipid and cannabinoid ingredients, so the result cannot be attributed to palmitoylethanolamide alone. Entry checked against the abstract only.
Source
Entry checked against the abstract on PubMed on 2026-09-22. The dose shown is the dose the researchers used. It is not a recommendation. How to read this page.