Marijuana as epilepsy treatment? Two new studies agree that it's the best cure for hard-to-treat cases

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Epilepsy is a brain disorder that can cause seizures and affects about 460,000 children aged 0 to 17, CDC estimates. This week, two new studies that show how a marijuana-derived oil may be effective in reducing seizures in children with epilepsy are to be presented at the American Epilepsy Society's annual meeting in Philadelphia, HealthDay News reports.

NPR reports that the first is the largest study being presented at the meeting, as it has begun in 2014 with 313 children from 16 different epilepsy centers across the country. Researchers led by Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist at the New York University Langone Medical Center, gave the participants cannabidiol (CBD), a natural derivative of marijuana, over the course of three months. Among the 261 participants who completed the trial, the number of convulsive seizures or grand mal or tonic-clonic seizures was decreased by 50 percent, and about one out of every 10 patients became seizure-free.

"In the subsequent periods, which are very encouraging, 9 percent of all patients and 13 percent of those with Dravet Syndrome epilepsy were seizure-free. Many have never been seizure-free before," Dr. Devinsky commented.

A second study was conducted over the course of 12 months on 25 children with epilepsy, all of which were about 9 years old on average. They took Epidiolex for a year and by the end of the study, about 40 percent of the children experienced a 50-percent decrease in seizures. One child had Dravet syndrome, a form of epilepsy that does not get better with other treatments, but showed improvement and had no seizures by the end of the study, LiveScience reports.

However, 48 percent of the participant stopped taking Epidiolex during the study because it wasn't working for them. One child stopped using it because it made his seizures worse.

"The studies that have come out thus far are very small studies," Dr. Scott Stevens, an attending neurologist at North Shore-LIJ HealthSystem's Comprehensive Epilepsy Care Center in Great Neck, New York, told LiveScience. He warned to take these studies "with a grain of salt" because the patients in the study were aware of the medication they were taking, which means that they could be biased.

Researchers are currently waiting for the results of a large, randomized, placebo-controlled trials. Despite the studies' encouraging results, Devinsky commented that they cannot confirm if cannabidiol does have an effect on epilepsy, and cautions parents to take extra care in deciding what types of medications to give to their children who suffer from seizures.

"Parents are desperate and they feel the medical community has failed them, which is true in many cases," Dr. Devinsky commented.