According to researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children, cannabis oil with a little THC may help children who have severe epilepsy.
The Canadian study used experimental oil on 20 children who have Dravet Syndrome, a form of epilepsy that is hard to treat.
Some children with the syndrome have over 1,000 seizures a month. The fact that it begins in the first year of life, can lead to severe developmental delays and learning disabilities.
Many of the children in the study had seen a significant drop in their seizures after taking the drug for several weeks.
The children had their dosage slowly increase over several weeks, though only eight of the patients reached the dose the researchers had set as their target.
Most of the children developed side effects such as increased sleepiness, decreased appetite and diarrhea, but they improved in most as the children developed tolerance to the CBD-THC oil.
“In the participants who reached the target treatment dose we saw a statistically significant reduction in motor seizures, and an increase in seizure-free days compared to those who did not reach the target dose,” Dr. Blathnaid McCoy, a neurologist at SickKids.
“We observed promising clinically beneficial effects including a reduction in seizure frequency and improvements in certain aspects of adaptive functioning and quality of life measures,” McCoy said.
The full results appear in the journal, Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology.
According to McCoy, the study adds “to a growing body of evidence that cannabinoids can exert anti-seizure effects and are safe and tolerable in treating pediatric DRE.”
