New Orleans, LA: Nearly half of pediatric patients prescribed CBD in the form of Epidiolex achieve a ≤25 percent reduction in seizures, according to clinical trial data published in the journal Epilepsy & Behavior.
Investigators affiliated with Tulane University’s School of Medicine assessed the adjunctive use of Epidiolex in 208 patients with treatment-resistant childhood epilepsy.
Researchers reported a significant decrease in seizure frequency across all diagnostic categories, with an overall median reduction in monthly seizures from 30 to eight. Forty-nine percent of patients experienced a greater than 25 percent reduction in seizure frequency following CBD treatment. Twenty-one percent of participants experienced a 51 to 75 percent reduction in seizures.
“Our study demonstrates that cannabidiol offers significant benefits in reducing seizure frequency across a variety of epilepsy etiologies in pediatric patients with medically refractory epilepsy,” the study’s authors concluded. “While CBD’s efficacy in conditions like Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome and Dravet Syndrome is well-documented our findings underscore CBD’s broader potential in managing other types of DEEs [developmental and epileptic encephalopathies], focal/multifocal epilepsy, and primary generalized epilepsy.”
In 2018, regulators at the US Food and Drug Administration granted market approval to Epidiolex, a prescription medicine containing a standardized formulation of plant-derived cannabidiol for the explicit treatment of Dravet Syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, two rare forms of childhood epilepsy.
Full text of the study, “Adjunctive use of cannabidiol for pediatric drug-resistant epilepsy: A retrospective multicenter analysis,” appears in Epilepsy & Behavior. Additional information on cannabis and epilepsy is available from NORML’s publication, Clinical Applications for Cannabis & Cannabinoids.