Cannabis based drug shows promise in children with resistant epilepsy

A cannabis based drug has shown encouraging results in treating a form of epilepsy unresponsive to existing drugs.1

Children with Dravet syndrome, a rare and catastrophic form of epilepsy, may experience many seizures a day. The condition, caused in most cases by a known genetic mutation affecting sodium channels in the brain, occurs in one child in 40 000 and leads to developmental damage and long term learning difficulties. Children affected require lifelong care.

Anecdotal evidence has suggested that cannabis helps some children, but the new research is the first randomised controlled trial to test the idea. It randomly assigned 120 children aged 2-18 in Europe and the US either to cannabidiol—a purified form of cannabis with very low levels …