Cannabis Compound Helps Epilepsy
Cannabis Compound May Help Epilepsy, British Researchers
Say
British researchers have determined
that a little-studied chemical in the cannabis plant could lead to effective
treatments for epilepsy, with few to no side effects.
The team at
Britain's University of Reading, working with GW Pharmaceuticals and Otsuka
Pharmaceuticals, tested cannabidivarin, or CBDV, in rats and mice afflicted with
six types of epilepsy and found it "strongly suppressed seizures" without
causing the uncontrollable shaking and other side effects of existing
anti-epilepsy drugs.
According to the findings, reported this week in the
British Journal of Pharmacology, CBDV also delayed and reduced seizures when
used in conjunction with two common anticonvulsant drugs.
"There is a
pressing need for better treatments for epilepsy," said Dr. Ben Whalley, the
lead researcher. "It's a chronic condition with no cure and currently, in around
one-third of cases, the currently available treatments do not work, cause
serious side effects and increase fatalities."
The study, he added,
highlights "the potential for a solution based on cannabinoid science. It has
shown that cannabidivarin is the most effective and best tolerated
anticonvulsant plant cannabinoid investigated to date."
The casual use of
marijuana -- or cannabis -- to control seizures dates back to ancient times. Its
most prominent component, THC, is among those shown in animal studies to have
strong anticonvulsant properties, but its mind-altering effects have made it
unsuitable for pharmaceutical development.
A number of the plant's more
than 100 cannabinoids are non-psychoactive, however. The most studied among them
is cannabidiol, or CBD, which has shown promise for multiple sclerosis
spacticity, nausea, epilepsy and schizophrenia. Animal studies with CBD have
also shown it to be effective as a neuoroprotectant and cancer-fighting
agent.
In recent years, California's medical marijuana proponents have
begun to breed plants for higher CBD content and develop customized tinctures
for patients with a range of ailments. Those treatments combine high doses of
CBD with smaller amounts of THC.
Yet CBD's widely known structure and
well-studied uses mean that the pharmaceutical industry has less of an
opportunity to protect patents on its use and profit from any drug development,
said Whalley and Raphael Mechoulam, the Israeli researcher who first identified
the structure of the compound nearly half a century ago and has conducted many
key CBD studies.
CBDV is a closely related chemical compound. While it
was discovered in 1969, the research made public this week was the first
conducted in animals, said Whalley, and only two small in vitro studies have
been published, neither of them related to epilepsy.
"The commercial
protection can be good even if the compound itself was identified some time ago,
as long as the proposed use is novel," he said. "The better described the 'new
use' is, the stronger the protection."
Medical marijuana proponents
largely dismiss pharmaceutical industry efforts as too profit-driven, and say
that encourages researchers to find a "magic bullet" compound rather than work
with the complex benefits that the whole plant provides. Yet Whalley countered
that "to make a cannabis-based medicine available and accessible to a global
patient community, the only viable route is via conventional drug development,
which is dictated by governmental legislation (and) regulation."
Dr.
Stephen Wright, research and development director for GW Pharmaceuticals, which
already markets a drug outside the U.S. that is half THC and half CBD for
multiple sclerosis patients, said the company hoped to advance the CBDV research
on epilepsy to human trials by next year.
Epilepsy affects about 1
percent of people worldwide, and is caused by excessive electrical activity in
the brain, which leads to seizures that can be
fatal.
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