Age-dependent association of cannabis use with risk of psychotic disorder
Abstract
Background: Epidemiologic research suggests that youth cannabis use is associated with psychotic disorders. However, current evidence is based heavily on 20th-century data when cannabis was substantially less potent than today.
Discussion: We found that cannabis use, compared to no cannabis use, was associated with over 11 times (95%CI4.6–27.3) greater risk of psychotic disorder at any point during adolescence (ages12–19 years)…
We observed a stronger measure of association during adolescence than the vast majority of previous studies. Meta-analyses of longitudinal studies suggest that cannabis use roughly doubles the risk of developing a psychotic disorder compared to non-users…
However, meta-analyses suggest that cannabis use is more strongly associated with psychotic disorders than with psychotic experiences (Marconi etal., 2016;Mooreetal., 2007).Our data also suggests that cannabis use is more strongly associated with more severe psychotic outcomes as the strength of association during adolescence increased markedly when we restricted the outcome to hospitalizations and ED visits (the most severe types of health service use).We highlight that of all the incident psychotic disorder hospitalizations/ED visits during adolescence, roughly 5 in 6 had reported lifetime cannabis use at baseline…
Conclusions: This study provides new evidence of a strong but age-dependent association between cannabis use and risk of psychotic disorder, consistent with the neurodevelopmental theory that adolescence is a vulnerable time to use cannabis. The strength of association dur ing adolescence was notably greater than in previous studies, possibly reflecting the recent rise in cannabis potency.
(Source: Psychological Medicine – Cambridge.org )
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