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Marihuana and Epilepsy: Activation of Symptoms by Delta-9-THC

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Book cover The Therapeutic Potential Of Marihuana

Abstract

“There is not a substance in the materia medica, there is scarcely a substance in the world, capable of passing through the gullet of man, that has not at one time or another enjoyed a reputation of being an anti-epileptic.” This 100-year-old conclusion of Seivking (quoted by Meinardi and Magnus, 1974: 666) puts the issue of purported anticonvulsant effects of marihuana into historical perspective. Considering the number of recent citations, marihuana is developing a reputation of being an anticonvulsant even to the degree that careful attention to details of existing evidence is sometimes lacking. For example, citing an early study by Davis and Ramsey (1949), the recent report on Marijuana and Health (1974: 135) states that “the THC-like compounds worked as well or better than these drugs [diphenylhydantoin and phenobarbital] in all children.” The Davis and Ramsey study is often cited as a demonstration of anticonvulsant effects in man but the report is very brief and without a detailed description of methods or results and is difficult to evaluate. Moreover, of the five patients studied one “had prompt exacerbation of seizures” (1949: 285) under one of the THC homologs. The early work of Lowe and Goodman (1947) on seizures induced in rats by electroconvulsive shock (ECS) or Metrazol injection has also been misquoted. Fried and McIntyre (1973) cite this study as showing that THC “was effective in attenuating Metrazol induced convulsions.” Actually Lowe and Goodman (1949: 352) report that marihuana constituents and its synthetic homologs “were found ineffective and exhibited a marked lethal synergism with Metrazol,” a result confirmed by Sofia, Solomon, and Barry (1971).

NOTE: This work was supported by NINDS grant NS 10469-02 to Dennis M. Feeney and by funds from Abbott Laboratories. We thank Toni Jelso, David Pitchford, and Bahadur Singh Longo for their assistance on this project. Dr. Monique Braude of the National Institute for Drug Abuse provided the delta-9-THC and the cannabidiolo We wish to especially thank Dr. Hamilton Redman and the Lovelace Foundation for donating the dogs for study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Psychology and Physiology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

    Dennis M. Feeney, Maura Spiker & Gerald K. Weiss

Authors
  1. Dennis M. Feeney
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  2. Maura Spiker
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  3. Gerald K. Weiss
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Sidney Cohen

  2. National Institute on Drug Abuse, Rockville, Maryland, USA

    Richard C. Stillman

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© 1976 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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Feeney, D.M., Spiker, M., Weiss, G.K. (1976). Marihuana and Epilepsy: Activation of Symptoms by Delta-9-THC. In: Cohen, S., Stillman, R.C. (eds) The Therapeutic Potential Of Marihuana. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-4286-1_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-4286-1_26

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-4288-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-4286-1

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