A new study out of the United States has found that people who use cannabis experienced better health outcomes and lower death rates after being hospitalised with COVID-19 than those who did not use cannabis.
The research examined 322,214 adults aged 18 and over drawn from the National Inpatient Sample Database, all of whom had been admitted to hospital with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis. Within that group, 2,603 individuals were identified as cannabis users.
Cannabis users in the study tended to be younger and were more likely to also use tobacco. That said, conditions such as obstructive sleep apnea, obesity, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus appeared more frequently among those who did not use cannabis.
When researchers applied univariate analysis — which examines each variable in a dataset independently — cannabis users showed substantially lower rates of intubation (6.8% versus 12%), acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) (2.1% vs 6%), acute respiratory failure (25% vs 52.9%), and severe sepsis with multi-organ failure (5.8% vs 12%).
The cannabis group also recorded lower rates of in-hospital cardiac arrest (1.2% vs 2.7%) and overall mortality (2.9% vs 13.5%).
The researchers conclude: "The beneficial effect of marijuana use may be attributed to its potential to inhibit viral entry into cells and prevent the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, thus mitigating cytokine release syndrome."
Prior research has pointed to cannabinoids as a potential brake on the process by which the body overproduces cytokines in response to viral infection — a phenomenon known as the cytokine storm, widely considered a primary driver of COVID-19 fatalities.
