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Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Marijuana Extract May Help Some Children With Epilepsy, Study Finds

Parents of children with severe epilepsy have reported incredible recoveries when their children were given cannabidiol, a derivative of marijuana. The drug, a non-psychoactive compound that occurs naturally in cannabis, has been marketed with epithets like Charlotte's Web and Haleigh's Hope.

But those parents were taking a risk; there has been no clinical data on cannabidiol's safety or efficacy as an anti-epileptic. This week, doctors are presenting the first studies trying to figure out if cannabidiol actually works. They say the studies' results are promising, but with a grain of salt.

The largest study being presented at the American Epilepsy Society meeting in Philadelphia this week was started in 2014 with 313 children from 16 different epilepsy centers around the country. Over the course of the three-month trial, 16 percent of the participants withdrew because the cannabidiol was either ineffective or had adverse side-effects, says Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist at the New York University Langone Medical Center and lead author on the study.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have Tourettes and yes it does work. I would also rather take that then a bunch of hard core meds. Now I just wish my insurance covered it.

Anonymous said...

Medical marijuana can't come fast enough in Maryland. Get your stuff together, will you, please!
Think of how many of us are successfully treating our conditions with marijuana and not experiencing the poor outcome and nasty side effects of what comes from laboratories, yet we are criminals in our own state and country for doing so.
Enough is enough.

Anonymous said...

Only in America would a headline like this exist. The public has known for years it helps, and science and doctors are just catching up? Might have something to do with the governments demonization of a perfectly safe plant. Such a waste of money and resources and locking people up because the older generation was so gullible to believe the governments LIES. thanks old people. Your generation can't die off fast enough. By the way cigs are safe says the govt, all old people who believe marijuana is bad should smoke at least a pack a day to live long and healthy ;)