Researchers offer advice on prescribing cannabis medicines to epilepsy patients

There's considerable interest in using cannabis-based medications to help treat drug-resistant epilepsy, but clinicians have little guidance on how or when to prescribe these products.

There's considerable interest in using cannabis-based medications to help treat drug-resistant epilepsy, but clinicians have little guidance on how or when to prescribe these products. A working group comprised of pediatric and adult epilepsy specialists, clinical pharmacists, pharmacologists, and cannabis researchers from across Australia recently developed an interim "consensus advise" for prescribers and published it in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. (Also read: Arthritis to piles; lesser-known health benefits of cannabis or bhang revealed by Ayurveda expert)

In the absence of a registration dossier, scientific experiments and case reports are helpful to provide some guidance to optimized dosing (Shutterstock)

The document provides an overview of the different cannabis medicines currently available for treating epilepsy in children and adults, with information on dose, drug interactions, toxicity, and type and frequency of symptom and seizure relief.

The consensus advice will be updated as new evidence emerges and will provide the structure for a more definitive guideline in the future.

"In the absence of a registration dossier, scientific experiments and case reports are helpful to provide some guidance to optimized dosing," said senior author Jennifer H. Martin, MBChB, MA, PhD, FRACP, a researcher at the University of Newcastle and the Director of the Australian Centre for Cannabis Clinical and Research Excellence.

"However as in this guidance, observational data obtained from clinical practice--which often includes information not included in scientific experiments or even early clinical trial data, such as treating patients with other comorbidities, taking multiple medications, and patient diversity--can be very helpful to clinical practice," he added.