Marijuana Treatment Reduces Severe Epileptic Seizures

A rigorous study validates a cannabis-derived treatment for a rare, drug-resistant childhood epilepsy.

Medical researchers have confirmed what some desperate parents have been claiming for years—that a nonpsychoactive component of marijuana known as cannabidiol (CBD) can reduce epileptic seizures in some children.

Published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the findings stem from a double-blind, placebo-controlled study—the most scientifically rigorous type of investigation possible.

“This study clearly establishes cannabidiol as an effective anti-seizure drug for this disorder and this age group,” says principal investigator Orrin Devinsky, director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at New York University Langone Medical Center. “It certainly deserves to be studied in other types of epilepsy.”

Read More at ScientificAmerican.com