There’s a new study out there showing a potential link between heavy use of marijuana and more severe seizures for people who suffer from epilepsy. However, it’s important to note at this point that the data is not definitive.
“But if someone is using cannabis to help with anxiety or sleep, I’d prefer to treat those problems with drugs we understand rather than something largely unregulated whose impact on the brain we don’t really know,” says the author of the study, Dr. Aaron Struck.
The study comes from WashU Medicine in St. Louis. To reach their conclusion they analyzed 64 patients’ medical records in which they were admitted to a medical unit where their seizures were being real-time monitored.
Of the 64, 22 of them reported using marijuana at least 20 times in a month. In this group of marijuana-users, 91% of them experienced seizures while 57% of the non-smokers had seizures.
The users also reported twice as many seizures per year.
The biggest and most clear issue with this study is its very small scale. The sample size of 64 is nowhere near enough to fully illustrate a correlation, and much bigger studies will be needed to draw this out.
Another one of the authors, Dr. Santiago Philibert Rosas, agrees. “Larger studies will help us give them a real answer — how much matters and whether stopping helps — so they can make an informed decision.”
