Category Archives: Dravet Syndome

Marijuana and its receptor protein in brain control epilepsy

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“VCU study is first to test anticonvulsant potential of marijuana and brain recurrent seizures. 

Ingredients in marijuana and the cannabinoid receptor protein produced naturally in the body to regulate the central nervous system and other bodily functions play a critical role in controlling spontaneous seizures in epilepsy, according to a new study by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The study, the first to look at marijuana and the brain’s cannabinoid system in live animals with spontaneous, recurrent seizures, suggests new avenues that researchers can explore in their search for more-effective drugs to treat epileptic patients who don’t respond to today’s anticonvulsant medications or surgery.

The results appear in the Oct. 1 issue of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

“Although marijuana is illegal in the United States, individuals both here and abroad report that marijuana has been therapeutic for them in the treatment of a variety of ailments, including epilepsy,” says Dr. Robert J. DeLorenzo, professor of neurology in the VCU School of Medicine.

 “If we can understand how marijuana works to end seizures, we may be able to develop novel drugs that might do a better job of treating epileptic seizures.” 

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological conditions, characterized by spontaneously recurrent seizures. Approximately 1 percent of Americans have epilepsy, and 30 percent of those patients are resistant to conventional anticonvulsant drug treatments.

Cannabinoids have been used as a natural remedy for seizures for thousands of years, and studies since at least 1974 have found that the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana displays anticonvulsant properties.” 

More:http://www.news.vcu.edu/news/Marijuana_and_its_receptor_protein_in_brain_control_epilepsy

Medical marijuana helps stem 6-year-old’s seizures – CNN

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“Six-year-old Jayden David violently shakes on the ground, his blue eyes vacant and then filled with searing pain. The video shows an unvarnished look at a seizure, something Jayden once experienced routinely.

Not anymore, says his father, thanks to medical marijuana.

Before he started taking a liquid, nonpsychoactive form of marijuana, Jayden couldn’t walk, eat solid food or take a bath.

He has Dravet’s syndrome, a rare and catastrophic form of childhood epilepsy. It has triggered seizures so frequent that 44 times he has been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, his distraught father by his side.

Jayden’s doctors prescribed 22 anti-seizure pills a day, which controlled the seizures but left him immobilized due to the side effects.

“He’s in pain and suffering and crying,” said Jayden’s father, Jason David. “You can’t help him no matter what. What are you supposed to do? You have to do whatever it takes to save their life.”

Last year, he had enough. Delirious with fatigue and emotional pain, Jason David called his mother to say he wanted to put a gun to his head, just to end the heartbreak of seeing his son suffer. His mother convinced him to not give up.

David turned to something he had seen on television: medical marijuana.

On June 4, 2011, David gave his son marijuana. For the first time since Jayden was 4 months old, the boy went through an entire day without a seizure.

“Instead of medical marijuana, this is miracle marijuana,” said David, holding up a jam jar full of liquefied and cooled cannabis.”

More: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/10/health/medical-marijuana-child/

Marijuana Helps 6-Year Old Beat Severe Seizures, Replaces Pharmaceuticals

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“Marijuana Replaces 22 Different Anti-Seizures Pills, Helps Prevent Seizures

As if the medical marijuana industry wasn’t controversial enough—with opponents arguing it encourages drug addiction and crime and supporters citing years of research to the contrary—there are now children benefiting from it. While there are several cases across the country of children being given various forms of cannabis to treat disease and illness, the case of 6-year old Jayden David is getting a particularly heavy dose of attention, where marijuana helped the boy beat severe epileptic seizures.”
 
 

Father successfully treats son’s epilepsy with medical cannabis (marijuana)

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Marijuana

 
“A California father’s desperate quest to find a viable solution to his young son’s rare form of epilepsy has led him to incredible success in medicinal marijuana. The Los Angeles Times (LAT) reports that Jason David’s son Jayden now functions normally, eats solid food, and takes only four prescription medications for his condition rather than the 22 he had been takingprior to starting the cannabis protocol.Young Jayden suffers from an extremely rare, and potentially fatal, epileptic condition known as Dravet syndrome that is categorized as a “catastrophic form of intractable epilepsy.” For Jayden, symptoms of the condition have included things like intense “grand mal” seizure fits, continuous muscle twitching, inability to respond to or interact with others, difficulty chewing, and frequent screaming episodes.

According to Jayden’s father Jason, Jayden had spent most of his life either sleeping or seizing, which put incredible strain on the family as it unsuccessfully tried using prescription drug after prescription drug to at least ease Jayden’s symptoms. But Jayden’s condition only got progressively worse in response to pharmaceuticals, which led Jason to actually consider committing suicide as he says he simply could no longer bear watching his son suffer in this horrific way.

After praying intensely about the situation and meeting with their local religious congregation for guidance; however, the Davids stumbled upon medical marijuana, and particularly cannabidiol (CBD), one of the many cannabinoid compounds naturally found in certain varieties of marijuana. Following a period of heavy research into the history and effectiveness of CBD, Jason decided it was worth giving the treatment a try with his son — and upon doing so, the Davids observed an almost immediate improvement in Jayden’s condition.” 

 

Medicinal marijuana stops seizures, brings hope to a little Black Forest girl

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“Six-year-old Charlotte Figi, a picture of precious in her “Gatsby”-style bob and blue toenails, stands patiently as her mother reaches up her dress to change her out of her soiled Pull-Ups. – Charlotte never says a word. She hasn’t in the past hour, and won’t for at least another 30 minutes, when she finally whispers the name of a visitor who is about to leave.

In the Figi household, these are signs of progress: Charlotte saying something. Charlotte eating and drinking. Charlotte standing and walking.

Charlotte breathing.

About 18 months ago, in the winter of 2011, Paige and Matt Figi signed a “do not resuscitate” order telling medical personnel to forgo life-saving measures for their daughter and let fate take its course.

They’d done all they could to control the seemingly endless, violent seizures that hit Charlotte 20, 40, 60 times a day. They put her on an extreme diet. They tried at least a dozen medications, many with harmful side effects. Despite some promising starts, nothing worked. And the rescue medications they were giving her to stop the seizures in fact stopped her breathing. CPR brought her back to life more than once.

After years of watching a cruel, incurable genetic disorder called Dravet Syndome rob their daughter of her basic bodily functions and send her into convulsions that caused head injuries and broken teeth, they had reached the end.

“We really thought, this is a horrible existence; she’s not going to live much longer.” Paige says. “This is not a life for her. This is torture. She is suffering all day. I’m not OK with this. She wasn’t even human anymore. She’d lie in my arms drooling, seizing, screaming and crying.”

Then, in an act of desperation, or inspiration – or maybe both – Matt called Paige from overseas, where he was working, and suggested a radical approach to Charlotte’s treatment.

“We need to try cannabis for Charlotte,” he told Paige. “We live in a compassionate state.”

Fifteen months later, the little girl with the DNR order is standing in the kitchen of their Black Forest home with her mother getting her Pull-Ups changed, cuddling in the arms of a visitor, playing with toys and strategically pushing the buttons on her “talker,” an electronic device that communicates when Charlotte can’t.

Her seizures have dropped from 1,200 a month to three, and the ones she has are shorter in duration and less severe. She’s off all the other medications with their troubling side effects. And, as one of the youngest medical marijuana patients in Colorado, her dramatic turnaround is starting to draw national attention, with a CNN report on the horizon.”

More: http://gazette.com/medicinal-marijuana-stops-seizures-brings-hope-to-a-little-girl/article/1502070

The endocannabinoid system and its therapeutic exploitation.

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“The term ‘endocannabinoid’ – originally coined in the mid-1990s after the discovery of membrane receptors for the psychoactive principle in Cannabis, Delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol and their endogenous ligands – now indicates a whole signalling system that comprises cannabinoid receptors, endogenous ligands and enzymes for ligand biosynthesis and inactivation. This system seems to be involved in an ever-increasing number of pathological conditions. With novel products already being aimed at the pharmaceutical market little more than a decade since the discovery of cannabinoid receptors, the endocannabinoid system seems to hold even more promise for the future development of therapeutic drugs. We explore the conditions under which the potential of targeting the endocannabinoid system might be realized in the years to come.”  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15340387

http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v3/n9/full/nrd1495.html

From cannabis to the endocannabinoid system: refocussing attention on potential clinical benefits.

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“Cannabis sativa is one of the oldest herbal remedies known to man. Over the past four thousand years, it has been used for the treatment of numerous diseases but due to its psychoactive properties, its current medicinal usage is highly restricted. In this review, we seek to highlight advances made over the last forty years in the understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the effects of cannabis on the human body and how these can potentially be utilized in clinical practice. During this time, the primary active ingredients in cannabis have been isolated, specific cannabinoid receptors have been discovered and at least five endogenous cannabinoid neurotransmitters (endocannabinoids) have been identified. Together, these form the framework of a complex endocannabinoid signalling system that has widespread distribution in the body and plays a role in regulating numerous physiological processes within the body. Cannabinoid ligands are therefore thought to display considerable therapeutic potential and the drive to develop compounds that can be targeted to specific neuronal systems at low enough doses so as to eliminate cognitive side effects remains the ‘holy grail’ of endocannabinoid research.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23155985

Compound in cannabis may help treat epilepsy, researchers say

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“British researchers have determined that a little-studied chemical in the cannabis plant could lead to effective treatments for epilepsy, with few to no side effects.

The team at Britain’s University of Reading, working with GW Pharmaceuticals and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, tested cannabidivarin, or CBDV, in rats and mice afflicted with six types of epilepsy and found it “strongly suppressed seizures” without causing the uncontrollable shaking and other side effects of existing anti-epilepsy drugs.

The casual use of marijuana — or cannabis — to control seizures dates back to ancient times. Its most prominent component, THC, is among those shown in animal studies to have strong anti-convulsant properties…”

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/14/news/la-sn-cannabis-cbdv-epilepsy-20120914

Cannabidivarin is anticonvulsant in mouse and rat.

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“Phytocannabinoids in Cannabis sativa have diverse pharmacological targets extending beyond cannabinoid receptors and several exert notable anticonvulsant effects. For the first time, we investigated the anticonvulsant profile of the phytocannabinoid cannabidivarin (CBDV) in vitro and in in vivo seizure models.”

 

“CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS:

These results indicate that CDBV is an effective anticonvulsant across a broad range of seizure models, does not significantly affect normal motor function and therefore merits further investigation in chronic epilepsy models to justify human trials.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22970845

Targeting the endocannabinoid system with cannabinoid receptor agonists: pharmacological strategies and therapeutic possibilities.

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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: 367 (1607)

“Human tissues express cannabinoid CB(1) and CB(2) receptors that can be activated by endogenously released ‘endocannabinoids’ or exogenously administered compounds in a manner that reduces the symptoms or opposes the underlying causes of several disorders in need of effective therapy. Three medicines that activate cannabinoid CB(1)/CB(2) receptors are now in the clinic: Cesamet (nabilone), Marinol (dronabinol; Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ(9)-THC)) and Sativex (Δ(9)-THC with cannabidiol). These can be prescribed for the amelioration of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (Cesamet and Marinol), stimulation of appetite (Marinol) and symptomatic relief of cancer pain and/or management of neuropathic pain and spasticity in adults with multiple sclerosis (Sativex). This review mentions several possible additional therapeutic targets for cannabinoid receptor agonists. These include other kinds of pain, epilepsy, anxiety, depression, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, stroke, cancer, drug dependence, glaucoma, autoimmune uveitis, osteoporosis, sepsis, and hepatic, renal, intestinal and cardiovascular disorders. It also describes potential strategies for improving the efficacy and/or benefit-to-risk ratio of these agonists in the clinic. These are strategies that involve (i) targeting cannabinoid receptors located outside the blood-brain barrier, (ii) targeting cannabinoid receptors expressed by a particular tissue, (iii) targeting upregulated cannabinoid receptors, (iv) selectively targeting cannabinoid CB(2) receptors, and/or (v) adjunctive ‘multi-targeting’.”  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23108552

“Targeting the endocannabinoid system with cannabinoid receptor agonists: pharmacological strategies and therapeutic possibilities”  http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1607/3353.long