Genomics, Cannabidiols Drive Epilepsy Research

Maybe your doctor can use cannabidiols for treating post stroke seizures. But never mind, your doctor won't know about this research for another 50 yesrs.
http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/articles/2016/01/genomics-cannabidiols-drive-epilepsy-research?
Cannabidiol for treatment-resistant epilepsy
Cannabidiol (CBD) is the most abundant non-psychoactive cannabinoid in the cannabis plant. There have been many animal studies in different species that show it has anticonvulsant effects, and there has been anecdotal evidence that it is also effective in children with treatment-resistant epilepsies such as Dravet Syndrome (DS) and Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS). Two studies at AES detailed the efficacy of Epidiolex, a pharmaceutical liquid formulation of the cannabidiol in humans.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently completed a double-blind randomized controlled Phase 3 trial of Epidiolex, and the analysis is expected to be done in February 2016.
Orrin Devinksy, director of the NYU Epilepsy Center presented the most updated data of Epidiolex from the Expanded Access programs, which is an open-label trial that took place at 16 sites. Open label means that all participants and physicians knew they were receiving and administering the drug and at what doses. No patients received placebos.
The data represents safety data for 313 patients, of which 261 patients had three months of continuous exposure to the drug. Participants in the study ranged in age from four months to 41 years, with a median age of 11.8 years. Devinksy explained that the cohort was made up of children and young adults with not only very treatment-resistant epilepsy, but very frequent seizures. Before the patients received Epidiolex, the median number of convulsive seizures over 28 days was 31, but the mean was 138.9.
Of the participants, 19 percent had no definite known cause of the epilepsy, DS was present in 17 percent, and LGS in 15 percent.
After 12 weeks, overall participants saw a 45 percent reduction in convulsive seizure frequency, and among all patients almost half (47 percent) experienced a 50 percent or greater reduction in seizures. Nine percent of all patients were seizure free and 13 percent with DS were seizure free. According to Devinksy, GLS patients also saw a very favorable response for atonic seizures, which is one of the most common types in that syndrome, with a median reduction of 71 percent.
“It’s important to highlight this is an extremely treatment refractory group,” Devinksy said at the press conference. “So these are numbers that are much greater than I would have predicted and certainly would have ever predicted from anything like a placebo response, although the randomized double blind studies will give us that more scientific data.”
Of side effects that were seen in 10 percent or more of patients, the most common included somnolence, diarrhea, fatigue, decreased appetite, convulsion and vomiting. Devinsky said that four percent of all patients quit the study because of side effects, and 12 percent withdrew due to lack of effectiveness. He noted that both those numbers are relatively low for an antiepileptic drug trial.
Michael Oldham, formerly at UCSF and currently at the University of Louisville, authored a related study that tested the long-term efficacy of Epidiolex. Researchers followed a subset of 25 patients at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francisco for one year. Participants had an average age of 9 and took cannabidiol in conjunction with their other anti-epileptic medication. At the press conference, Oldham said 36 percent of the participants saw a greater than 50 percent reduction in seizures and one participant with DS remained seizure-free after one year. Twelve people left the study for lack of effectiveness and one experienced a clear increase in seizure frequency from the CBD.
“This is a significantly drug-resistant population, so the fact that we did find from a third to 45 percent of patients with a greater than 50 percent reduction is quite remarkable, and definitely merits continuing to move ahead and certainly supports doing the randomized trial to see if that plays out,” Oldham said.
“These kind of response rates in such a treatment-resistant group with very high frequency occurrence of their seizures, it was a very positive and promising finding,” Devinsky said at the press conference of the studies. “I think this adds more fuel to the fire that this drug is definitely likely to be effective for some people.”