Cannabis use in childhood refractory epilepsy

Do you suffer or know someone who suffers from epilepsy? Epilepsy is a disease of worldwide distribution and is more common than we think. It affects people of all ages, genders or social status. Approximately 50 million people in the world live with seizures characterized by convulsive events, making epilepsy one of the most common neurological diseases globally.

But there is a more complex situation; 25 to 30 % of epileptics, i.e. about 20 million people worldwide, are drug refractory. This means that a patient's epileptic seizures are very frequent or the anticonvulsant treatment does not control the seizures. That is why, in the absence of satisfactory clinical results in the treatment of epilepsy, patients, parents and health professionals have joined forces over the years to seek more effective therapies with mechanisms of action with clearer answers than conventional mechanisms of action.

In 2013, a television channel released a documentary about a girl named Charlotte Figi, who suffered from a rare form of epilepsy; Dravet Syndrome! This is one of the multiple types of syndromes associated with refractory epilepsy. Do you know what it is like to live with Dravet Syndrome? It means that Charlotte suffered dozens of daily, uncontrollable seizures that reduced her life and that of her family members to dealing with this disease. Charlotte's childhood was not like that of any other child.

Hope for a change began when the Stanley brothers of Colorado produced a potent cannabis-based medication. In fact, Charlotte used to experience around 300 seizures a month, but after she was given low-THC cannabis oil, her number of seizures dropped to just 4 a month. In honor of her story, her progress and the social movement she sparked among parents and epilepsy patients, the strain of cannabis used in the oil was named "Charlotte's Web."

Currently, most of the studies on the influence of cannabis in the improvement of epilepsy symptoms consider the use of cannabinoids as an adjuvant and synergistic treatment with the basic treatment. This allows, in most cases, to gradually suppress a drug or reduce its dose, with the consequent benefit. However, clinically, the use of cannabis has never been considered as the only drug, nor as the first therapeutic option.

Despite this, 90% of the patients who received CBD showed some degree of reduction in seizure frequency. Approximately 60% improved other aspects such as behavior, alertness, language, motor skills, communication, and sleep. Adverse events were reported by 46% of patients, and only 14% had to discontinue treatment. Given these figures, many patients and parents who use cannabis as a treatment for epilepsy recognize that medicine should be focused on conducting more research leading to the borderless legal use of cannabis oil for the treatment of epilepsy symptoms.

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