Marijuana extract helps some kids with epilepsy Also:
Lack of sleep boosts chance of death by heart failure
Amedicine made from marijuana, without the stuff that gives a high, cut seizures in kids with a severe form of epilepsy in a study that strengthens the case for more research into pot’s possible health benefits.
“This is the first solid, rigorously obtained scientific data” that a marijuana compound is safe and effective for this problem, said one study leader, Dr. Orrin Devinsky of NYU Langone Medical Center.
He said research into promising medical uses has been hampered by requiring scientists to get special licenses, plus legal constraints and false notions of how risky marijuana is.
“Opiates kill over 30,000 Americans a year, alcohol kills over 80,000 a year. And marijuana, as best we know, probably kills less than 50 people a year,” Devinsky said.
The study was published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.
For years, desperate patients and parents have argued for more research and wider access to marijuana, with only anecdotal stories and small, flawed studies on their side. The new study is the first large, rigorous test — one group got the drug, another got a dummy version, and neither patients, parents nor doctors knew who took what until the study ended.
It tested a liquid form of cannabidiol, one of marijuana’s more than 100 ingredients, called Epidiolex, (eh’pih-DYE’-uh-lehx). It doesn’t contain THC, the hallucinogenic ingredient, and is not sold anywhere yet, although its maker, GW Pharmaceuticals of London, is seeking US Food and Drug Administration approval.
The company paid for, designed and helped run the study, and another doctor involved in the study has related patents. Patients in the study have Dravet (drah-VAY) syndrome , a type of epilepsy usually caused by a faulty gene. It starts in infancy and causes frequent seizures, some so long-lasting they require emergency care and can be fatal. Kids develop poorly, and their mental impairment seems related to the frequency of seizures — from 4 to as many as 1,717 a month in this study.
Allison Hendershot’s 12-year-old daughter Molly was four months old when she had her first. It lasted an hour and a half, and emergency room doctors medically induced a coma to stop it. Molly, who lives in Rochester, New York, has tried more than half a dozen medicines and a special diet, but her seizures continued.
“We literally could not count how many” before she started in the study, her mom said.
It included 120 children and teens, ages 2 to 18, in the US and Europe. They took about a teaspoon of a sweet- smelling oil twice a day (drug or placebo) plus their usual anti-seizure medicines for 14 weeks. Their symptoms were compared to the previous four weeks.
MIAMI:
Not getting enough sleep can double the chances of dying from heart disease or stroke, particularly in people with risk factors like diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and cholesterol, US researchers said Wednesday. The findings in the Journal of the American Heart Association were based on 1,344 adults who were randomly selected for a sleep study in Pennsylvania.
Participants’ average age was 49, and 42 percent were men.
They were recruited to undergo a series of health screenings, and spend one night in a sleep laboratory.
Just over 39 percent were found to have at least three risk factors for heart disease, which when clustered together are known as metabolic syndrome. (Agencies)