Results of a newly published study indicate “a real-life positive effect of CBD on alternating hemiplegia of childhood type spells.”
Many alternating hemiplegia of childhood (AHC) patients have received Cannabidiol (CBD) but, to our knowledge, there are no published data available”, states the abstract of the study, which was published by the European Journal of Paediatric Neurology and epublished by the US National Library of Medicine.
The goal of the study was to “Test the hypothesis that CBD has favorable effects on AHC spells.”
For the study a retrospective review of available data of AHC patients who received CBD was conducted. Clinical Global Impression Scale of Improvement (CGI-I) score was used for response of AHC spells to CBD. A secondary analyses was performed to achieve an understanding of the effect of CBD as compared to flunarizine, were CGI-I scores of 1) epileptic seizures to CBD, 2) AHC spells to flunarizine, 3) epileptic seizures to flunarizine. Also, Mann-Whitney test was done for comparison of CGI-I scores of CBD and flunarizine to both AHC spells and seizures.
“We studied 16 AHC patients seen at Duke University and University of Lyon. CI of CGI-I scores for AHC spells in response to CBD and to flunarizine, each separately, indicated a positive response to each of these two medications: neither overlapped with the null hypothesis score, 4, indicating significant positive responses with p < 0.05 for both”, states the study.
“These two scores also did not differ (p = 0.84) suggesting similar efficacy of both: CBD score was 2 ± 1.1 with a 95% CI of 1.5-2.6 and flunarizine score was 2.3 ± 1.3 with a 95% CI of 1.7-3.1. In patients who had seizures, CI calculations indicated a positive effect of CBD on seizure CGI scores but not of flunarizine on seizure scores.”
Researchers say that “CBD was well tolerated with no patients discontinuing it due to side effects and with some reporting positive behavioral changes”, concluding that “Our study indicates a real-life positive effect of CBD on AHC type spells.”
