Patients with refractory epilepsy report sustained improvements in their symptoms following the use of medical cannabis preparations, according to observational data published in the journal Brain and Behavior.
Investigators assessed the use of cannabis-based medicinal products (CBMPs) in a cohort of 134 patients with treatment-resistant epilepsy. (British health care providers may prescribe cannabis-based medicinal products to patients unresponsive to conventional medications.) Patients’ outcomes were assessed at one, three, and six months.
Medical cannabis treatment was associated with improvements in patient‐reported epilepsy‐specific outcomes, alongside improvements in anxiety, sleep quality, and health-related quality of life. Over 96 percent of study subjects reported no adverse events from cannabis treatment.
“Treatment with CBMPs was associated with an improvement in both epilepsy‐specific and general HRQoL [health-related quality of life] outcomes at one, three, and six months,” the study’s authors concluded. “This study shows the promising potential of CBMPs as an adjunctive treatment option in the management of TRE [treatment-resistant epilepsy.”
