Medical marijuana: effects on epilepsy need to be tested, expert tells Brisbane symposium
Testing marijuana's effectiveness as an epilepsy treatment will be no easy accomplishment, a Brisbane symposium has heard.
But Griffith University neurologist and researcher Professor Roy Beran told the Queensland Epilepsy Symposium on Thursday tests were essential because there was no other effective treatment for some epileptic syndromes.
Anecdotal feedback from epilepsy sufferers and their families suggested marijuana could alleviate symptoms in some cases.
"In particular, the one everybody mentions is Dravet syndrome, which is a very horrible form of epilepsy," Professor Beran said.
But no scientific study has examined marijuana's efficacy as a treatment for epileptic seizures.
In April, the American Academy of Neurology concluded there was not enough information to show if medical marijuana was effective in treating epileptic seizures.
"Basically, there may be a component in marijuana that acts as an anti-epileptic medication – emphasis on the maybe," Professor Beran said.
"We don't think it is the addictive component [THC], we think it's the other part of the marijuana.
"But we can't test it, really, because at the moment it's illegal and then if it were legal we haven't got the money to do it, so we'd have to fund it.
"The issue is the big pharma (pharmaceutical companies) can't patent it because the product is already out there.
"They can't control the income from it so it would have to be funded from a different source."
Professor Beran said medical testing of marijuana would have to be legalised before research could begin.
"Which means there has to be a coming together of state and federal legislature, then there has to be funding to allow it to happen, to make a trial work and that's an expensive exercise," he said.
"Also we need to work out how to purify it, what is the dose ... what part of marijuana is the treating part, the medicinal part."
Generic epilepsy treatments 'vary widely' in dosage
Professor Beran also told the symposium there were serious concerns about the varying dosage of generic forms of existing epileptic medications.
He said the problem of variability in generic epilepsy treatments needed to be addressed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
Professor Beran said up to 11 generic versions of certain epilepsy treatments were on sale, but changing from one to another could effectively halve or double the dosage because their effects were so varied.
"While people get up and say generics are all the same they are not, particularly in epilepsy," he said.
"We have actually shown you can get a marked difference in bio-availability and efficacy with generic compounds where the chemist says they're the same."
"A minor change in the constitution of a product can cause major problems for the person with epilepsy.
"And one seizure can be enough to destroy someone's life."
