Marijuana-Based Drug Found to Reduce Epileptic Seizures

Marijuana-Based Drug Found to Reduce Epileptic Seizures

An experimental drug derived from marijuana has succeeded in reducing epileptic seizures in its first major clinical trial, the product’s developer announced Monday, a finding that could lend credence to the medical marijuana movement.

The developer, GW Pharmaceuticals, said the drug, Epidiolex, achieved the main goal of the trial, reducing convulsive seizures when compared with a placebo in patients with Dravet syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy.

If Epidiolex wins regulatory approval, it would be the first prescription drug in the United States that is extracted from marijuana.

So apparently the pharmaceutical industry is finally getting on board with marijuana based medicine. GW Pharmaceuticals has successfully created the first drug derived from the cannabis plant. It will treat epilepsy. Some may see this as a sign that big business is going to steal marijuana away, but I see it as a sign to finally get one of the biggest lobbying efforts to keep this plant illegal to switch sides. If the pharmaceutical industry can actually profit off of this plant then the road map to descheduling, decriminalization, and ultimately legalization will become much easier.

“The results of this Epidiolex pivotal trial are important and exciting, as they represent the first placebo-controlled evidence to support the safety and efficacy of pharmaceutical cannabidiol in children with Dravet syndrome,” Dr. Orrin Devinsky of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at New York University Langone Medical Center, said in a statement.

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Epidiolex contains almost pure cannabidiol, a component of marijuana that does not make people high. GW is hoping that if the drug gets approved, doctors and parents will favor it over products from medical marijuana dispensers, which will not have gone through the same rigorous vetting.

So naturally, the government is going to take this information and tell us that there isn't enough research yet to deschedule marijuana from schedule 1. Like it always does...

I've wondered if the anti-epileptic qualities of marijuana would work for my temporal lobe epilepsy. But I no longer want to get high, that was something I was more interested in as a teenager.

They supposedly have some types that don't get you high but they are still illegal if you do not have a card. Once you get the card you probably get on some list that they can use against you later on.

a reply to: rickymouse

Well I noted in the OP that this pill uses CBD, which is the enzyme that doesn't get you high in marijuana. So, with this drug you wouldn't be getting high to treat your epilepsy.

Epidiolex contains almost pure cannabidiol, a component of marijuana that does not make people high.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

If you look at Marinol and the heart-attacks, I don't thing specific terpenes are meant to be isolated from the plant, or synthetically created. It may help the seizures, but are there any health risks? I think that pharmaceutical isolation could be dangerous. The 64 known terpenes in the plant are meant to be a "cohesive whole" if you ask me.

If it does come out in medical studies that this pharmaceutical has dangerous side-effects, then I fear that it will hurt the medical cause. It could give them a way to say that since the extract is medically ineffective or worse dangerous, that the plant that it comes from should remain illegal. I hope this does help the medical cause, but Monsanto is all too interested in patenting cannabis strains....

I knew of a guy who had tourettes syndrome except he had to grab boobs and butts, crotches...I swear this is true. My friend worked on movie sets with him. He would always grab then apologized. People who knew him accepted it but those who didn't, poor guy got into many fights.

One time they had to shovel all this dirt into plastic bags and when the tourettes guy had the shovel he would take it and put it up to his neck, then apologized, do it again...apologize.

My friend, the eternal pot smoker, took him to smoke a joint...his first one.

It helped him.

a reply to: InFriNiTee

Well it isn't approved by the FDA yet. It still likely needs to go through the standard testing that all drugs have to go through to be approved for sale on the drug market.