“Objective: We report our findings regarding effectiveness, safety, and tolerability of cannabidiol (CBD)-enriched medical cannabis as add-on therapy in children with drug-resistant epileptic encephalopathies (DEEs) after a median follow-up of 20 months.
Methods: A prospective cohort study was conducted to assess effectiveness, safety, and tolerability of CBD-enriched medical cannabis oil added to standard antiseizure medications in children with drug-resistant DEE seen at a single center.
Results: Between October 2018 and March 2020, 59 patients were enrolled. Mean age at enrollment was 10.5 years (range, 2-17 years). Median treatment duration was 20 months (range, 12-32). Median age at first seizure was 8 months (range, 1 day – 10 years). At the end of follow-up, 78% of the children had a ≥ 50% decrease in seizure frequency and 47.5% had a > 75% decrease. Seven patients (11.9%) were seizure free. The number of seizures was reduced from a median of 305/month to 90/month, amounting to a mean reduction of 57% and a median reduction of 71% (p < 0.0001). Adverse effects were mostly mild or moderate. CBD was discontinued in 17 patients (28.8%) due to lack of response to treatment, increased seizure frequency, intolerance to the drug, or poor compliance.
Conclusion: In children with drug-resistant DEEs, long-term treatment of CBD-enriched medical cannabis as an adjuvant therapy to antiseizure therapy was found to be safe, well tolerated, and effective. Sustained reductions in seizure frequency and improvement of aspects of daily living were observed compared to our preliminary findings.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34999381/
- “•Long-term use of CBD-enriched medical cannabis as add-on treatment seems safe and effective in DEE.
- •The drug was well tolerated and had a positive impact on aspects of daily living.
- •Good results were found in patients with LGS and DS, as well as those with DEEs other than LGS and DS.
- •No tolerance to CBD-enriched medical cannabis was observed in any of the children.”
https://www.seizure-journal.com/article/S1059-1311(22)00001-2/fulltext
“Cannabinoids have been found to be effective in controlling seizures and the highly purified form of cannabinoid derived for Cannabis sativa . Cannabidiol (CBD) is now approved for Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) and Dravet syndrome. CBD was used in a 9-year-old boy with LGS (unknown etiology) with very good results. The electroencephalography (EEG) response was very dramatic with near normalization of EEG background and complete control of seizures. The effect of CBD on EEG with such an improvement has not been described previously. Also, this adds to evidence that early intervention in LGS with CBD might be more helpful and improve outcomes.”
“Voltage-gated sodium channels are targets for a range of pharmaceutical drugs developed for treatment of neurological diseases.
“Pharmaceutically purified oral cannabidiol (CBD) has been recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency as treatment of seizures associated with Dravet syndrome (DS) and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS), which are severe and difficult-to-treat developmental and epileptic encephalopathies with onset in early childhood.
“In recent years there has been a growing appreciation by regulatory authorities that cannabis-based medicines can play a useful role in disease therapy.
“Highly purified cannabidiol (CBD) has demonstrated efficacy with an acceptable safety profile in patients with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome or Dravet syndrome in randomized, double-blind, add-on, controlled phase 3 trials.
“Mutations in SYNGAP1 are associated with developmental delay, epilepsy, and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Epilepsy is often drug-resistant in this syndrome with frequent drop attacks.
“Epilepsy contributes to approximately 1% of the global disease burden. By affecting especially young children as well as older persons of all social and racial variety, epilepsy is a present disorder worldwide. Currently, only 65% of epileptic patients can be successfully treated with antiepileptic drugs. For this reason, alternative medicine receives more attention.
“Cannabidiol (CBD) is a major phytocannabinoid in Cannabis sativa. CBD is being increasingly reported as a clinical treatment for neurological diseases.
“Resting-state (rs) network dysfunction is a contributing factor to treatment resistance in epilepsy. In treatment-resistant epilepsy (TRE), pharmacological and nonpharmacological therapies have been shown to improve such dysfunction.