The NHS is spending more than £20 for a loaf of gluten-free bread, 10 times more than the £2 charged for a standard small (400g) gluten-free loaf in Sainsbury’s.
Gluten provokes painful inflammation of the bowel in people who have an immune-response allergy to the protein, found in wheat, rye and barley products. The condition is known as Coeliac Disease.

In the past, gluten-free products were difficult and costly to get hold of, and many people obtained them via prescription. They are now commonly found on supermarket shelves and their cost has come down.

While they cost more than standard versions, typically up to twice as much, the NHS appears to be paying well over the odds.

Darren Millar, the Conservative shadow minister for health in the Welsh Assembly, found out that the NHS in Wales paid £984,185 for 47,684 gluten-free loaves last year — or £20.64 a loaf. In an answer to a question he put to the assembly, he was also told that packets of gluten-free pasta were costing the NHS £11.54 per bag. Similar packs cost £2 in supermarkets.

Ginger snap biscuits cost £10.07, compared with £2.35 in the shops, and wheat-free gravy mix £15.21, rather than £2.59.

Mr Millar said: “It’s currently costing the NHS 10 times more for this bread than the price in a supermarket.

“Many taxpayers will question why they are also footing the bill for hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of snacks such as biscuits and cakes.”

“Foods of this type have become much more widely available and yet the number of prescriptions has risen.”

A spokesman for the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “It smacks of incompetence that the Welsh NHS is paying so much more than they are available for in the shops.

“This doesn’t look like taxpayers are getting value for money.”

Dr David Bailey, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP committee in Wales, added: “It makes little sense for gluten-free foods to be prescribed.”

In 2010, the NHS in Wales, which serves a population of three million, spent just over £2 million on gluten-free products.

Given that the population of Britain is some 20 times that, it is likely that the overall NHS bill stands at £40 million, although in England some patients pay prescription charges.

Mr Millar commented: “That’s a heck of a sum of money. When cash is short, should we really be spending public money on such things? I think not.”

Sarah Sleet, chief executive of the charity Coeliac UK, said the high costs resulted from bureaucratic supply chains in the NHS.

She called for greater efficiency but said such items should still be available on prescription for sufferers.

“It’s in the interest of the NHS to keep people with coeliac healthy, and prescriptions play an important role in this,” she said.

A spokesman for Lesley Griffiths, the Welsh health minister, said: “Work is now under way to identify savings that can be made in reducing the number of gluten-free products prescribed by the NHS.”

From:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-pays-20-for-a-loaf-that-costs-2-in-a-supermarket

The government is under pressure to consider tax rises and further spending cuts to find the money to pay for the overhaul of social health care.
An independent review has recommended individual costs be capped at £35,000 – a move which would cost £1.7bn a year.

Ministers have said they will consider the proposals, but the Treasury is known to have reservations.

However, both the Dilnot Commission and campaigners are preparing to keep the pressure on in the coming months.

Commission chairman Andrew Dilnot is urging ministers to act quickly and consider ways extra funds could be found.

After launching his report on Monday, he said he wanted to see the government come forward with a white paper by Easter, paving the way for the introduction of the new system by the end of this parliament.
‘Build momentum’

Meetings are now being planned with officials about how his proposals would work in practice.

He is said to be confident that he will be able to win the argument and wants to use the next few months to “build momentum” around his plans.

The Dilnot Commission’s proposals would require an extra £1.7bn a year – a figure which would rise along with the ageing population.

This could be found by making cuts elsewhere. The NHS has already been pinpointed as it has a budget of over £100bn and many of its services overlap with social care.

Alternatively, £3bn a year could be raised through getting those who work past the normal retirement age to pay national insurance contributions or through an across the board rise of 0.25% in contributions

Increasing the basic rate of income tax by 0.25%, VAT by 0.5% or reducing pension tax relief would bring in £2bn a year.

In a warning to ministers, he said if they did not act before Easter the commission’s feelings would move “quickly to disappointment”.

His case is being strengthened by having widespread support from charities – some of whom are involved in delivering social care services.

More than 20 charities, including Carers UK and Mencap, immediately put their names to a joint statement calling for action.

It said: “It is now vital that government sets out a clear timetable for change and does so quickly.”

Many of them will also be seeking talks with government in the coming months. A number of options are being put forward for finding the money.

These include taking money from other departments as the £1.7bn represents just 0.25% of total government spending.

It will also be argued that improving social care will help save the NHS money as fewer people will need expensive hospital treatment if they get better access to social care.

However, raising more through taxes or the benefits system will also be put forward.

An analysis from Age UK setting out how this could be done has already been handed over to the Treasury.

It includes suggestions such as making those working past the normal retirement age pay national insurance contributions. This would raise £3bn a year.

Alternatively a 0.25% rise in contributions across the board would make a similar amount.

Meanwhile, £2bn could be found by either increasing the basic rate of income tax by 0.25%, VAT by 0.5% or reducing pension tax relief.

For any of these to happen, cross-party support would almost certainly be needed.

The Labour party has already indicated it would be willing to enter talks. But doubts still remain about the appetite for change.

In his official response to the Dilnot Commission, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said the proposals would be “carefully considered”.

But he acknowledged they would involve “significant cost” and need to be balanced against other funding priorities.

A spokeswoman for the Treasury refused to be drawn on any of the suggestions.

But she said officials would welcome “constructive engagement from all stakeholders”.

Michelle Mitchell, of Age UK, said: “The government now needs to act on Andrew Dilnot’s proposals. Delay would be indefensible.”

And Richard Humphries, of the King’s Fund health think-tank, added: “A solution must be found.

“What we are talking about is a relatively small proportion of government spending.”

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14017252

Only 56% of the government’s £50 million interim Cancer Drugs Fund – or just under £27.5 million – was spent by Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) in England during the time the Fund was available from October 2010 to March 31, 2011, new figures show.
This spending rises to just over £32.5 million (65%) if anticipated future costs are included for patients whose treatment was initiated before March 31, says leading charity the Rarer Cancers Foundation (RCF), in a new report evaluating the impact of policies to improve access to cancer treatments.

The study shows that 2,880 applications were made to the interim Cancer Drugs Fund during October 2010-March 31, 2011 (773 applications in March alone) and that, overall, 2,506 cancer patients gained access to treatment as a result of the Fund, although applications for 187 patients were denied.

It also reveals a dramatic postcode lottery with a northsouth divide in approvals, as SHAs in the south of England approved a lower number of applications than those in the north.

For example, NHS South Central approved around 75% of applications during the period whereas NHS North East approved every application it received, and while NHS South West used less than a quarter of its allocated funds, NHS Yorkshire and the Humber spent slightly more than its allocated budget.

Most SHAs have taken steps to expedite the application process for the Fund, with one – NHS East of England – removing the requirement for clinicians to submit exceptional-case applications before they can access the Fund.

Also, six out of 10 SHA operate lists of drugs which will be routinely reimbursed through the Fund. “This approach reduces bureaucracy, enables rapid decision-making and provides greater certainty to clinicians and patients,” says the RCF.

However, NHS North West’s operation of a negative list of drugs which will only be funded in exceptional circumstances breaches the spirit of the Cancer Drugs Fund policy, says the RCF, adding that, despite guidance instructing SHAs to cease using negative lists, NHS North West’s list was still operational on June 3, 2011.

The Fund could potentially benefit more than 30,000 patients, enabling them to access 34 treatments which would not have been routinely available on the NHS, and patients with bowel, kidney and blood cancers have been among the greatest beneficiaries, the report finds.

The most-requested drug – by far – has been Roche’s Avastin (bevacizumab), followed by Merck & Co’s Erbitux (cetuximab), Novartis’ Afinitor (everolimus), GlaxoSmithKline’s Tyverb (lapatinib) and Roche’s MabThera (rituximab).

Commenting on these findings, RCF chief executive Andrew Wilson said that while it was “great news” that thousands of patients have benefited from the Fund, it was concerning that 187 patients had been denied life-extending treatment “despite money going unspent and the emergence of significant regional variations in approval rates.”

The report also looks at progress with Primary Care Trust (PCT) exceptional-case processes. It estimates that 7,743 applications were submitted between April 2007 and December 2010, and suggests that the substantial increase in application rates during October-December last year reflects the fact that many SHAs required clinicians to submit exceptional-case applications to PCTs before a treatment could be considered for reimbursement from the Cancer Drugs Fund.

October-December 2010 (the period in which the interim Fund was introduced) also saw a dramatic drop in the exceptional-case approval rate.

This is likely due to more clinicians being encouraged to apply for treatments which would have stood little chance of being approved before the Fund was introduced, the Foundation suggests, although it adds that this requires further investigation.

Reforms to the NHS are already under way and working well doctors claimed after Andrew Lansley insisted that change was essential.
The head of a doctors’ group said that new bodies led by GPs have taken over from managers across the country, and are improving services to patients while saving money by reducing pressure on hospitals.

Dr Michael Dixon, chairman of the NHS Alliance, defended the changes by saying that neither medics nor the public wanted to be “pawns in the system” any more.

But he was warned that the power GPs appear to have been given to buy treatment is just an “illusion” and that they will end up merely rationing care in order to save money.

It comes after the Health Secretary, Mr Lansley, wrote in The Daily Telegraph that the NHS faces a £20 billion a year funding black hole unless it undergoes major surgery.

His Health and Social Care Bill proposes abolishing two tiers of management and allowing new GP-led bodies, called commissioning consortia, to buy £60billion a year of treatment from either state-run hospitals or private providers.

It has been bitterly opposed by much of the medical establishment on the grounds it may fragment services and lead to backdoor privatisation, and the legislation was put on “pause” by David Cameron after Liberal Democrats and peers threatened a rebellion.

But BBC Radio 4’s Today programme heard on Thursday that many of the changes are already happening on the ground, as clusters of GPs form consortia to take over from Primary Care Trusts.

Dr Dixon of the NHS Alliance said: “The evidence is in our report, showing over 20 commissioning groups already delivering better services for their patients and also delivering them more cost effectively.

“For instance, in this country the use of hospitals is disproportionately more than anywhere else in the world and those commissioning groups are showing how they can look after patients better in the community.

“If the commissioner is king, they can get the right balance of private and public and the right balance of competition and collaboration.”

Asked why more GPs were not in favour of the new regime, he replied: “To look after our whole patient population is quite an added responsibility and I think some people find that quite daunting.”

But he went on: “Many of us in this commissioning movement are fed up with being pawns in the system and fed up with our patients being pawns in the system.

“We feel that if we can make sure the NHS is delivering change and improvement from the bottom up instead of having to listen to targets coming down from Whitehall, that often don’t mean much to us, we can actually make a difference.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/GP-group-says-Andrew-Lansleys-NHS-reforms-are-already-working

Hospitals in England have been fined for keeping patients in mixed sex accommodation under a new push to eradicate the problem.There were 2,660 breaches in April – half the number from the previous month, the Department of Health said.

Hospitals are fined £250 for each day a patient is kept in mixed sex wards.

It means at least £665,000 of fines have been levied, although the sum could be higher as the data does not detail how long a breach has been for.

The Coalition government’s drive on mixed sex accommodation follows failed attempts by the Labour administration to tackle the issue.

Labour ministers struggled, partly because large chunks of the NHS estate date back decades and proved hard to convert.

Extra money has now been ploughed in to the system to help build more single rooms to rectify this.

April marked the first month the new fining system was applied. Previously, the levels of fines varied considerably depending on the treatment and were inconsistently levied.

Over the past few months, the government has been publishing breach figures ahead of the start of the new fining system. These show the problem has been improving.

In December there were more than 11,000 breaches. By March that had fallen to under 5,500. However that has to be seen in the context of the one million plus patients seen each month.

Single sex accommodation means patients sharing sleeping, bathroom and toilet facilities only with people of the same sex.

The rules do allow wards to be segregated into distinct bays as long as they have separate facilities.

They apply to all trusts from acute hospitals to mental health units. Only intensive care and A&E are excused.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said the downward trend was pleasing, but there were “still too many breaches”.

He added all the fines would be reinvested back into patient care.

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mixed sex wards lead to hospital fines

The NHS and social care services will “collapse” unless the Coalition’s health reforms are enacted because of growing demand from elderly people, Saga and Age UK have warned.
Ros Altmann, director-general of Saga, said stalling reform was “not an option” due to growing numbers of the very old and frail. Michelle Mitchell, charity director of Age UK, added that reform was essential because there was “little or no joint planning” on how to care for the elderly.

Their calls come a day after a group of 42 senior GPs wrote in the Telegraph that the Health and Social Care Bill would lead to “enormous benefits” for “the most elderly, infirm and vulnerable in society”.

This was because the formation of Health and Wellbeing Boards on local councils would “coordinate all aspects of care … into a coherent and seamless whole”.

For decades elderly people had been shunted into hospital when they did not really need to be there because growing demand for social care, such as home care assistants, had been neglected.

She thought the Bill offered a vital opportunity to change the situation.

“We will have to address this and integrate, so let’s get on with it,” she said. “None of this is going to be easy, but so far we have not had any serious attempts to solve it. After pensions, it’s the next crisis coming down the tracks.”

“I’m hoping that this Government is really serious about getting it right, rather than doing the spin. I’m reasonably optimistic.”

She hoped reforms would lead to GPs being able to prescribe “domiciliary care” for elderly people while they could not cope at home, for example after a minor fall, “just as they prescribe drugs now”.

Such a move would stop large numbers being admitted to hospital and becoming “bed blockers”.

Ms Mitchell said: “At the moment, silo thinking means that health and social needs are not considered as a whole and there is little or no joint planning between the respective services.

“If the Government is concerned about how best to meet the needs of older people with complex needs, joining up services is a must.”

Ruth Isden, the charity’s public services programmes manager, said improving “poor coordination” could deliver “huge benefits” for patients and large efficiency savings.

But she warned that the Health and Wellbeing Boards, as currently envisaged, “do not have a strong enough role”.

Local public health and social care directors will sit on them with GPs to formulate strategy. She said the boards needed to be given “teeth” to ensure the GP consortia followed through.

Meanwhile, Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, admitted that sticking with the status quo on the NHS was not an option.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-will-collapse-without-reform-warns-Saga

NHS Health service chief executives have troughed their pay to almost £160,000 despite calls for restraint.
The Coalition’s health reforms could drive up managers’ pay even further by giving executives more control over salaries, according to Incomes Data Services (IDS). The research group, which tracks executive pay, said health service chiefs had routinely ignored “pay guidance”.

The Department of Health has told NHS trusts that executive salaries should rise by no more than 1.5 per cent a year, but IDS estimated that average executive pay rose by 4.5 per cent in 2009-10.

Based on salaries disclosed in annual reports, the median salary of an NHS trust chief executive in England was £158,800 last year.

Steve Tatton, of IDS, said: “With salary rises running at these levels, such restraint so far does not seem to have been a feature of boardroom pay deliberations.”

The research also found that NHS trusts that were free of central control tended to pay their bosses more. The median earnings of chief executives in foundation trusts was £164,500, compared with £152,500 for non-foundation trusts.

Mr Tatton said those findings posed a dilemma for ministers. “The Government wants to bear down on senior executive pay in the public sector, yet it also wants to see decisions made locally without interference from central authorities.

“The issue for NHS organisations is will they be free to pay their senior executives what they decide is necessary or will they have to follow externally imposed pay restraints?,” he added.

Some health executives are paid much more than the median, with at least 46 receiving pay and benefits packages worth more than £200,000. The best-paid executive identified was Ron Kerr, the head of Guys and St Thomas’ foundation trust in London, who had a total remuneration package worth £274,000.

Several of the best paid executives lead trusts that have announced job losses.

University College London trust, whose chief executive Sir Robert Naylor was paid £262,500, is cutting more than 300 posts, and Barts and London, where Peter Morris received £262,000, is cutting 635.

IDS also found increasing “instability” on NHS trusts’ management boards, with almost a quarter of senior jobs changing hands every year.

Boardroom turnover for non-foundation NHS trusts was 24 per cent in the year to March, up from 17 per cent the previous year. In foundation trusts, it rose from 14 per cent to 21 per cent.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-pay-bosses-ignore-calls-to-curb-pay-rises

New EU red tape has come into force banning hundreds of traditional herbal remedies.
The EU red tape which kicked in on May 1st is claimed to protect consumers from possible damaging side-effects of over-the-counter herbal medicines.

For the first time, new regulations will allow only long-established and quality-controlled medicines to be sold.

But both herbal remedy practitioners and manufacturers fear they could be forced out of business.

To date, the industry has been covered by the 1968 Medicines Act, drawn up when only a handful of herbal remedies were available and the number of herbal practitioners was very small.

But surveys show that about a quarter of all adults in the UK have used a herbal medicine in the past two years, mostly bought over the counter in health food shops and pharmacies.

The regulations will cover widely used products such as echinacea, St John’s Wort and valerian, as well as traditional Chinese and Indian medicines.

But safety concerns have focused on the powerful effects of some herbal remedies, as well as the way they interact with conventional drugs.

For example, St John’s Wort can interfere with the contraceptive pill, while ginkgo and ginseng are known to have a similar effect to the blood-thinning drug warfarin.

From now on only products that have been assessed by the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) will be allowed to go on sale.

Manufacturers will have to prove that their products have been made to strict standards and contain a consistent and clearly marked dose.

And to count as a traditional medicine, products must have been in use for the past 30 years, including 15 years within the EU.

They will also only be approved for minor ailments like coughs and colds, muscular aches and pains, or sleep problems.

The manufacturers of herbal remedies have had seven years to prepare for the new rules after the European Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products was introduced in 2004.

These regulations apply to over-the-counter sales, which form the bulk of herbal remedies sold in the UK.

But some manufacturers and herbal practitioners have expressed concern, arguing the new rules are too onerous for many small producers.

Michael McIntyre, chairman of the European Herbal and Traditional Medicines Practitioners Association, says there will be a significant impact on herbal medicine practitioners and their suppliers, but admits the rules do need bringing up to date.

“Products that go on the market now will definitely do what it says on the bottle, while we didn’t know how good they were in the past.

“But registration is expensive so perhaps there may be fewer products on the market and a smaller range.

“It’s difficult to argue that the market should stay as it is, without any regulation, but how many businesses will pack up and walk away? I can’t say.”

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “We have swiftly introduced a system to register herbal practitioners using unlicensed herbal medicines, so consumers will be able to continue to use unlicensed herbal medicines if they wish.”

A private company that won a 10 year contract to run a failing GP surgery in east London has pulled out after three years- doctors are warning that it is a taste of things to come.
It was billed as a move that would transform the quality of healthcare for patients in one of Britain’s poorest areas. In late 2007, the primary care trust (PCT) in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets handed Atos Healthcare, a subsidiary of the French multinational IT firm Atos Origin, a 10-year contract to manage a failing NHS GP surgery.

The decision to choose a private firm with a limited record in providing healthcare in the face of rival bids from two well-regarded local NHS GP practices sparked controversy. Local doctors passed a motion of no confidence in Tower Hamlets PCT.

Angry medics and patients, fearful of the potential impact of the privatisation of this part of the NHS, staged a protest march, and wrote to MPs and the PCT to complain about the decision.

Alwen Williams, chief executive of the embattled PCT, assured patients that Atos’s stewardship of the St Paul’s Way medical centre in Bow would mean much-needed “major new service improvements”.

Although Atos ran an NHS walk-in centre in nearby Canary Wharf, it was better known for its expertise in healthcare technology rather than primary healthcare. And Tower Hamlets faces some difficult challenges. It has the third highest level of multiple deprivation in England, significant numbers of children living in families that depend on benefits, the highest rate of overcrowding in London and a 49% non-white population.

“As a multi-ethnic community, we have a disease spectrum that’s a lot wider than many areas,” says Abdur Rahim, a GP at Chrisp Street health centre in Tower Hamlets, which was part of one of the losing bids. “This is a very challenging area.”

Now, barely three years on, Atos has just walked away from its deal, having failed to revive St Paul’s Way’s fortunes. The PCT says that in November, it and the firm “mutually agreed to terminate the contract with an exit date of 31 March 2011 in order to allow for safe transfer of patient care and for effective plans for staff to be made.”

Local GPs, whose expertise was overlooked in 2007, have been put in temporary charge of the centre while the PCT decides its next step.

“Atos never had any experience of running GP surgeries. They didn’t know Tower Hamlets or the health needs here. They put their bid in with the lowest cost, but that isn’t the same as showing they could best meet the local people’s needs,” says Rahim.

Now doctors are warning that the company’s failure is a foretaste of what lies in store if health secretary Andrew Lansley’s attempt to impose a competition-driven model of healthcare on to the NHS in England becomes reality.

“St Paul’s Way is a very cautionary tale. There’s an unavoidable contradiction between running something to maximise profit as opposed to running a service designed to meet the needs of patients,” says Anna Livingstone, a GP who opposed Atos’s takeover. She feels that the case offers a telling example of the pitfalls of competitive commissioning and questions the ethics of a system where big companies can walk away from contracts after outbidding smaller providers.

“There really was a huge amount of anger. Patients and ourselves were angry not only about privatisation but privatisation with a company that we had never worked with before and that had no track record in general practice,” she says. “Still, we thought this might be a testing ground for Atos, that they would work hard to provide a good practice. They had good doctors there. But we were naive. The low-cost contract they had won was impossible to deliver on.”

Data from Ipsos Mori’s GP Patient Survey shows Atos failed to lift St Paul’s Way from the bottom of Tower Hamlets’ patient satisfaction league table.

In 2009-10, only 41% of St Paul’s Way patients said they could access a doctor’s appointment within 48 hours, compared with the Tower Hamlets average of 72%. Just over a quarter said they were able to see their preferred doctor most of the time, less than half of the borough average and way below the national average in England.

Doctors working at St Paul’s Way concede that patients have been unhappy with appointment arrangements for some time. Fahim Chowdhury, clinical lead at the surgery, insists that the practice could get patients seen within 48 hours, but says that it often struggled to arrange appointments for patients with specific doctors. He says improvements were made to the continuity of care, thanks to Atos replacing locum GPs with a stable staff of five doctors, all of who still work at St Paul’s Way.

Chowdhury says lessons can be learned from Atos’s experience. He was impressed by the company’s employee relations, the stability it brought to a practice that had undergone turbulent times, the administrative and managerial support, and its readiness to leave clinical matters in the doctors’ hands. Yet it highlights the difficulties facing private providers looking to get involved in frontline healthcare provision, which the coalition’s “any willing provider” vision of the NHS will encourage.

“The NHS can learn from the efficiency of private business. In this day and age GP practices can’t ignore things like budgets,” Chowdhury says. “If a private company is going to make money in this area, it will be one that is well established in providing primary care. Atos didn’t have that. It came to St Paul’s Way at a tough time. There was a financial crisis and it was taking over a practice that is incredibly demanding.”

Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of GPs, says the saga raises troubling questions about how healthcare in the new era will operate. “What will the failure regime be for private providers? What will happen if such providers go bankrupt and can’t deliver services they promised?” she asks.

“The risk is that patients could be left in the lurch, and without access to the appointments or operations they were expecting. St Paul’s Way shows that some people may not be able to sustain a service at the price they’ve taken it on at and that the promised quality of patient care may not be delivered. Competition should always be on quality rather than price.”

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/nhs-privatisation-future-policy

Researchers at the University of Reading have discovered that three compounds found in cannabis leaves can help to reduce and control seizures in epilepsy.
They are now using extracts from the plants grown in huge industrial-sized greenhouses in the south of England to develop new drugs that could ease the misery of millions of epilepsy sufferers around the world.

In the UK alone there are more than 500,000 people who suffer from epilepsy.

Dr Ben Whalley, who is leading the research at the department of pharmacy at the University of Reading, said tests in animals had shown the compounds effective at preventing seizures and convulsions while also having less side effects than existing epilepsy drugs.

He said: “There was a stigma associated with cannabis that came out from the 60s and 70s associated with recreational use, so people have tended not to look at it medicinally as a result.”

“Cannabis is thought of being a treasure trove of compounds that could be used for pharmacological development. We have a list of around a dozen potential candidates for epilepsy and have tested three that show promise.”

“These compounds are very well tolerated and you are not seeing the same kind of side effects that you get with the existing treatments.”

Epilepsy is caused by sudden bursts of electrical activity in the brain that disrupt the normal way in which messages are transmitted. This can cause debilitating seizures and fits that can lead to sufferers injuring themselves.

Dr Whalley, together with his colleagues Dr Claire Williams and Dr Gary Stephens have been working with drug company GW Pharmaceuticals to develop and test new treatments for the disease from cannabis.

Two of the compounds they have identified, one called cannabidiol and the other called GWP42006, have been highly effective at controlling seizures in animals and the researchers now hope to begin clinical trials in humans within the next three years.

Neither of the compounds produce the characteristic “high” associated with cannabis use.

The scientists, whose latest findings on the compounds are published in the scientific journal Seizure, believe they work by interfering with the signals that cause the brain to become hyper-excitable, which leads to epileptic seizures.

Until now the main medicinal use that has been explored for cannabis has been in treating Multiple Sclerosis and for pain relief in cancer patients.

GW Pharmaceuticals has been given a license to grows around 20 tonnes of cannabis a year at its facilities in a rural part of southern England for medicinal research. In each glasshouse the temperature is carefully maintained at 77 degrees F while the crops are protected by electric fences and 24 hour security.

Mark Rogerson, from GW Pharmaceuticals, said: “Medicinal cannabinoids can treat a wide range of diseases like MS and pain.

“The work by Dr Whalley and his team is taking us into a whole new area where there is a real unmet need. The stigma is counterbalanced by the fact that it is a serious medicine for a serious condition.”

A spokesman for Epilepsy Action said: “Epilepsy is a condition that can be very difficult to treat.

“We are aware of some people with epilepsy who have used cannabis for medicinal purposes. However, it should be noted that although taking cannabis may reduce seizures in some people, it could actually increase seizures in others.

“We therefore welcome research into this treatment area. It could help our understanding of alternative therapies and may prove useful in the long-term for people whose epilepsy does not respond to more traditional methods.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Cannabis-could-be-used-to-treat-epilepsy