WATCH: Medical cannabis and epilepsy – exploring the evidence

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Experts discuss the real-world evidence to support the prescribing of medical cannabis in children with refractory epilepsy.

On Tuesday 22 February, families and campaigners joined researchers in highlighting the current real-world evidence base and the need for population-wide prescribing for children suffering daily, life-threatening seizures.

The event, which was hosted by Drug Science and Medcan Support at the House of Lords  brought together MPs, regulatory bodies and charities to highlight the lack of NHS prescriptions for medical cannabis.

More than three years since the former Home Secretary Sajid Javid, changed the law to allow for medical cannabis prescriptions, only three have been issued on the NHS.

Drug Science researcher, Dr Rayyan Zafar, presented findings collected by the charity through Bayesian analysis, which show that medical cannabis has a 96 per cent chance of significantly reducing seizures in children with severe epilepsy.

Patients also demonstrated a reduction in the use of anti-epileptic drugs after beginning treatment and an overall improvement in quality of life.

A follow-up study  reported that seizure frequency was reduced by 86 per cent.

Investigators reported no significant adverse effects and some patients were reported as being in remission, or seizure-free, following treatment.

Zafar breaks down the evidence with Medcan Support’s Dr Callie Seaman, who is an experienced plant scientist and epilepsy patient who has used cannabis for more than 20 years to manage her own symptoms.

“We’ve collected data from 20 families of children with refractory epilepsy, some of whom were having up to 10,000 seizures a month. These patients are all taking whole-plant cannabis, cannabis which contains CBD, THC and all the other minor cannabinoids, terpenes and flavonoids.

“We found that in the cohort of 20 patients there was an 86 percent reduction in seizure frequency which is quite an outstanding number. This was fairly consistent, every patient did see a reduction in seizures and there were three patients which went into complete remission after so many years of not responding to anti-epileptic drugs.”

But despite Drug Science reporting that prescription costs have come down over the last year, families are still forced to fundraise hundreds of pounds a month until this treatment becomes available on the NHS.

Dr Seaman added: “Studies like these are fantastic in that we can understand more about the medication, more about those different strains and terpene profiles, and what has those positive and negative effects.

“Everyone sees epilepsy as just seizures, there is so much more to epilepsy. There’s the comorbidities, depression, the lack of sleep, the anxiety, fear that we’re going to have a seizure at any point, cannabis helps with all those symptoms, not just the seizure control. It helps to improve that quality of life.”

Watch the full interview here 

Video editing: Jack Pierce