A 2016 Israeli research investigated the effects of CBD cannabis oil on 74 paediatric patients with epilepsy and found most patients reported a reduction in seizure frequency.
The study was conducted by four major Israeli paediatric epilepsy clinics and includes: Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Wolfson Medical Centre, Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, Panaxia Medical Devices and Pharmaceuticals.
This cannabis research is different from prior clinical trials investigating the influence of cannabis and epilepsy because the patients and their medical history were well known to researchers in all clinics and also, because only two cannabis oils were used and the composition of both is well-defined and controlled. It should be noted that due to the novelty of the idea to use cannabis as a form of treatment for paediatric epilepsy, researchers only chose the most severe cases from the totality of their patients.
According to the study, most of the patients (89%) reported some reduction in seizure frequency: 18% reported 75–100% reduction, 34% reported 50–75% reduction, 12% reported 25–50% reduction, and 26% reported less than 25% reduction. Seven per cent patients reported aggravation of seizures which led to withdrawal of use of cannabis oil.
One patient, a 7-month-old baby, with severe acquired hypoxic ischemic damage, intractable spasms and partial complex seizures, became seizure-free on CBD oil at a dosage of 2mg/kg/d. The improvement demonstrated on his electroencephalogram (EEG) enabled a gradual decrease in the dosages of his other anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs).
Further prospective, well designed clinical trials using enriched CBD medical cannabis are required in order to validate the study’s findings.