Regional brain abnormalities associated with heavy long-term cannabis use

RIS ID

21928

Publication Details

Yücel, M., Solowij, N., Respondek, C., Whittle, S., Fornito, A., Pantelis, C. & Lubman, D. I. (2008). Regional brain abnormalities associated with heavy long-term cannabis use. Archives of General Psychiatry, 65 (6), 694-701.

Abstract

Context: Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in the developed world. Despite this, there is a paucity of research examining its long-term effect on the human brain.

Objective: To determine whether long-term heavy cannabis use is associated with gross anatomical abnormalities in 2 cannabinoid receptor-rich regions of the brain, the hippocampus and the amygdala.

Design: Cross-sectional design using high-resolution (3-T) structural magnetic resonance imaging.

Participants: Fifteen carefully selected long-term (more than 10 years) and heavy (more than 5 joints daily) cannabis-using men (mean age, 39.8 years; mean duration of regular use, 19.7 years) with no history of polydrug abuse or neurologic/mental disorder and 16 matched nonusing control subjects (mean age, 36.4 years)

Main Outcome Measures: Volumetric measures of the hippocampus and the amygdala combined with measures of cannabis use. Subthreshold psychotic symptoms and verbal learning ability were also measured.

Results: Cannabis users had bilaterally reduced hippocampal and amygdala volumes (P=.001), with a relatively (and significantly [P=.02]) greater magnitude of reduction in the former (12.0 percent vs 7.1 percent). Left hemisphere hippocampal volume was inversely associated with cumulative exposure to cannabis during the previous 10 years (P=.01) and subthreshold positive psychotic symptoms (P less than .001). Positive symptom scores were also associatedwith cumulative exposure to cannabis (P=.048). Although cannabis users performed significantly worse than controls on verbal learning (P less than .001), this did not correlate with regional brain volumes in either group.

Conclusions: These results provide new evidence of exposure- related structural abnormalities in the hippocampus and amygdala in long-term heavy cannabis users and corroborate similar findings in the animal literature. These findings indicate that heavy daily cannabis use across protracted periods exerts harmful effects on brain tissue and mental health.

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.65.6.694