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A new study has found that marijuana users with epilepsy typically spend fewer days in the hospital for epilepsy-related issues compared to people with epilepsy who didn’t use cannabis. Data from the study shows that epileptic individuals who used cannabis had an elevated epilepsy event capturability rate and reduced hospital stays.
Although medical and recreational marijuana is legal across dozens of states, research into the drug’s potential medical benefits is still in its infancy. Oliver Hoerth from Mayo Clinic’s Department of Neurology’s Division of Epilepsy says the researchers determined that they needed more information about how THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana, affected epilepsy patients under observation.
A few past studies found that cannabis may have some effect against epilepsy and seizures but further research is needed to truly understand the connection between cannabis, THC, and epilepsy. For the recent study, Hoerth and his Mayo Clinic colleagues analyzed how hospital admission, length of stay, and epilepsy-related event recording in the epilepsy monitoring unit (EMU) were affected by marijuana use among patients with epilepsy.
They used admissions data from 2023 that included 191 epileptic patients with 61 cannabis users and 130 non-users and conducted an event capturability analysis of 151 patients who were admitted to the Mayo Clinic epilepsy monitoring unit with 53 marijuana users and 98 non-users. An epilepsy event was captured in 44 of the users as well as 64 of the non-users.
The team’s analysis led to the discovery that marijuana users had a mean admission length of 3.2 days compared to 3.8 days for non-cannabis users. Furthermore, the event capturability rate for patients with epilepsy who used cannabis saw an 18.1% jump compared to non-users in the admissions database.
Study data also shows that cannabis users had a higher likelihood of possessing psychological condition-related epilepsy risk factors such as mental, sexual, and sexual abuse, generalized anxiety disorder, and major depressive disorder. This could be because several past studies have found cannabis can help manage mental disorders such as anxiety and depression. A growing number of Americans now use the drug for mental health reasons.
However, as cannabis research is still a vastly unexplored field, Hoerth and his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic noted that further study is necessary to truly understand the neuropsychological effects of cannabis use in individuals with epilepsy as well as how the drug affects overall brain health, mood disorders, and cognitive function.
When studies publish their findings indicating that marijuana use could reduce the amount of time epileptic patients spend in hospital, entities like Canopy Growth Corp. (NASDAQ: CGC) (TSX: WEED) are encouraged to keep bringing medical marijuana products to the market since their full direct and indirect positive effects are only beginning to be documented.
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