Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis Observational Study Finds Cannabis Use Associated with Heightened COVID-19 Mortality

As the deadly disease that came to be known as COVID-19 started spreading in late 2019, scientists rushed to answer a critical question: Who is most at risk? That answer became quickly more clear---ranging from age, smoking history, high body mass index (BMI) and the presence of other diseases such as diabetes — led people infected with the virus much more likely to become seriously ill and even die. But cannabis use remains an unconfirmed risk factor four years later until now. Evidence has emerged over time indicating both protective and harmful effects. In fact, this research team now links cannabis to higher risk of serious illness for those with COVID-19.

The Study

Published June 21 in JAMA Network Open, the study authors analyzed the health records of 72,501 people seen for COVID-19 at health centers in a major Midwestern health-care system during the first two years of the pandemic.

The study team analyzed deidentified electronic health records of people who were seen for COVID-19 at BJC HealthCare hospitals and clinics in Missouri and Illinois between Feb. 1, 2020, and Jan. 31, 2022. The records contained data on demographic characteristics such as sex, age and race; other medical conditions such as diabetes and heart disease; use of substances including tobacco, alcohol, cannabis and vaping; and outcomes of the illness — specifically, hospitalization, intensive-care unit (ICU) admittance and survival.

The researchers discovered that individuals reporting any use of cannabis at least once in the year before developing COVID-19 were significantly more likely to need hospitalization and intensive care than were people with no such history. This elevated risk of severe illness was on par with that from smoking.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis science writer Tamara Schnieder recently covered this topic in the academic medical center’s News Hub.

“There’s this sense among the public that cannabis is safe to use, that it’s not as bad for your health as smoking or drinking, that it may even be good for you,” said senior author Li-Shiun Chen, MD, DSc, a professor of psychiatry. “I think that’s because there hasn’t been as much research on the health effects of cannabis as compared to tobacco or alcohol.

What we found is that cannabis use is not harmless in the context of COVID-19. People who reported yes to current cannabis use, at any frequency, were more likely to require hospitalization and intensive care than those who did not use cannabis.”

Cannabis use was different than tobacco smoking in one key outcome measure: survival. While smokers were significantly more likely to die of COVID-19 than nonsmokers — a finding that fits with numerous other studies — the same was not true of cannabis users, the study showed.

“The independent effect of cannabis is similar to the independent effect of tobacco regarding the risk of hospitalization and intensive care,” Chen said. “For the risk of death, tobacco risk is clear but more evidence is needed for cannabis.”

COVID-19 patients who reported that they had used cannabis in the previous year were 80% more likely to be hospitalized, and 27% more likely to be admitted to the ICU than patients who had not used cannabis, after considering tobacco smoking, vaccination, other health conditions, date of diagnosis, and demographic factors. For comparison, tobacco smokers with COVID-19 were 72% more likely to be hospitalized, and 22% more likely to require intensive care than were nonsmokers, after adjusting for other factors.

Contradicting Prior Data Points?

These results contradict some other research suggesting that cannabis may help the body fight off viral diseases such as COVID-19.

“Most of the evidence suggesting that cannabis is good for you comes from studies in cells or animals,” Chen said. “The advantage of our study is that it is in people and uses real-world health-care data collected across multiple sites over an extended time period. All the outcomes were verified: hospitalization, ICU stay, death. Using this data set, we were able to confirm the well-established effects of smoking, which suggests that the data are reliable.”

The study was not designed to answer the question of why cannabis use might make COVID-19 worse. One possibility is that inhaling marijuana smoke injures delicate lung tissue and makes it more vulnerable to infection, in much the same way that tobacco smoke causes lung damage that puts people at risk of pneumonia, the researchers said. That isn’t to say that taking edibles would be safer than smoking joints. It is also possible that cannabis, which is known to suppress the immune system, undermines the body’s ability to fight off viral infections no matter how it is consumed, the researchers noted.

“We just don’t know whether edibles are safer,” said first author Nicholas Griffith, MD, a medical resident at Washington University. Griffith was a medical student at Washington University when he led the study. “People were asked a yes-or-no question: ‘Have you used cannabis in the past year?’ That gave us enough information to establish that if you use cannabis, your health-care journey will be different, but we can’t know how much cannabis you have to use, or whether it makes a difference whether you smoke it or eat edibles. Those are questions we’d really like the answers to. I hope this study opens the door to more research on the health effects of cannabis.”

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/washington-university-school-of-medicine-in-st.-louis-observational-study-finds-cannabis-use-associated-with-heightened-covid-19-mortality-d07b3b97

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39 US States Are Seeing Rise in COVID-19 Cases, CDC Data Show

Recent data show that COVID-19 cases are on the rise in several dozen U.S. states, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said there’s no sign that the variants driving that increase lead to more severe symptoms.

The latest data collected by the CDC show that 39 states and territories have seen a growth in COVID-19 infections, while the virus is “declining or likely declining in [zero] states.” Cases are either at a stable level or the status is unclear in remaining states, the CDC said.

More general data for the week ending on June 24 provided by the CDC show that cases have increased by 1.2 percent.
It comes as other CDC data show that a newly discovered COVID-19 variant, KP.3, is the most dominant strain, accounting for an estimated 22 percent to 46 percent of all cases.

Several CDC officials didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.

“There is currently no evidence that KP.3 or LB.1 cause more severe disease” and the agency continues “to track SARS-CoV-2 variants and is working to better understand the potential impact on public health,” David Daigle, a spokesman for the agency, told CBS News on June 25. SARS-CoV-2 refers to the virus that causes COVID-19.

As compared with previous increases in COVID-19—which some media outlets have described as “surges”—deaths from the virus appear to be at an all-time low, according to a graph provided by the federal health agency. Virus-linked hospitalizations are also at what appears to be their lowest point since the pandemic started in March 2020, the data show.

“Most key COVID-19 indicators are showing low levels of activity nationally, therefore, the total number of infections this lineage may be causing is likely low,” a CDC spokesperson said in a statement earlier this month, while adding the variant will become the “most common lineage” around the United States.

Andy Pekosz, a molecular microbiology professor at Johns Hopkins University, said that the KP.3 variant also doesn’t appear to cause more severe symptoms, adding that antibodies provided through prior infection or vaccines have led to better outcomes in recent months.

“After exposure, it may take five or more days before you develop symptoms, though symptoms may appear sooner,” he said in a question and answer session published on the Johns Hopkins website earlier this month.

“You are contagious one to two days before you experience symptoms and a few days after symptoms subside. And as with previous variants, some people may have detectable live virus for up to a week after their symptoms begin, and some may experience rebound symptoms,” Mr. Pekosz said.

In May, the CDC announced that hospitals are no longer mandated to report COVID-19 hospital admissions, capacity, or other COVID-19 information. The old “data will be archived as of May 10, 2024, and available at United States COVID-19 Hospitalization Metrics by Jurisdiction, Timeseries,” according to a statement posted on the CDC website last month.

This month, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel suggested that vaccine manufacturers such as Pfizer and Moderna target COVID-19 strains derived from JN.1, which include KP.2, KP.3, and LB.1.

“We’ve seen descendants of that moving along, that’s KP.2, KP.3 and LB.1,” the FDA’s Dr. Peter Marks told news outlets on June 21. “So these other new variants, these came up relatively quickly. I wouldn’t say they caught us by surprise, but because they happened relatively quickly, we had to react.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/cdc-data-show-39-us-states-are-seeing-a-rise-in-covid-19-cases-5675750

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