Study: daily cannabis use by alcoholics linked to reduced liver damage

Often used as a painkiller, cannabis is also used to break addiction to more harmful substances. like alcohol or heroin. A new study published in the Liver International shows that cannabis use among chronic alcoholics could limit the damage to their livers.

For this peer-reviewed study, a team of scientists from the Universities of Massachusetts, Johns Hopkins and New York examined data from 319514 hospitalized patients with a history of alcohol abuse.

The data suggest that 10% of alcoholics who also consumed cannabis showed lower rates of «alcoholic steatosis (AS), steatohepatitis (AH), fibrosis, cirrhosis (AC) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).»

According to the study, «among alcohol users, people who also used cannabis (both dependent and non-dependent) showed significantly lower odds of developing alcoholic steatosis».

The study correlated alcohol abuse with cannabis use and examined the likelihood of progressively developing alcoholic liver disease, according to three groups of cannabis exposures:

• non-cannabis users (90,39%)
• non-dependent cannabis users (8,26%)
• dependent cannabis users (1,36%)

Heavy drinkers who did not consume cannabis were 90.39% more likely to develop liver disease. Conversely, alcoholics with or without cannabis dependence faced a reduced risk of developing one of the various alcoholic liver diseases.

Although cannabis has already been shown to have anti-inflammatory properties, the study concludes that the correlation between a reduction in the frequency of liver disease and cannabis consumption «remains unclear».