New-found hope for epilepsy patients in the form of Marijuana

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Marijuana, as it turns out, is not only great to get a high, but has also been found to have great medical properties.

Studies have found that Marijuana has the power to help children suffering from severe epilepsy.

However, according to experts, it is still a bit premature to confirm the effectiveness and/or the safety factor of the medicine that is made from cannabis.

The medicine is a liquid form of cannabidiol (CBD), one of marijuana’s crucial compounds, and it is currently undergoing clinical trials in the United States and other places.

Various reports have suggested that parents of children with severe epilepsy have claimed incredible recoveries when their children were given cannabidiol, a derivative of marijuana. The drug, a non-psychoactive compound that occurs naturally in cannabis, has been marketed with epithets like Charlotte’s Web and Haleigh’s Hope.

According to a report in Albany Daily Star, the results from the new study “are very encouraging with regards to both safety and effectiveness,” Dr Orrin Devinsky, director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone Medical Center, told Live Science. However, he cautioned that the new results are from an uncontrolled study, meaning there was no control group of participants who took a placebo instead of the drug. Only the data from the double-blind, randomized, controlled trials that are currently underway will give the researchers the critical and scientifically valid data, he said.