NOT GOOD –
July 21, 2023 – “We observed associations between cumulative marijuana use and multiple epigenetic markers across time,” says Lifang Hou, a preventative medical doctor and epidemiologist from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Cannabis is a commonly used substance in the United States, with 49 percent of people trying it at least once, Hou and a team of US researchers report in their published paper. Some US states and other countries have made it legal, but we still don’t fully understand its effects on our health.
The researchers studied around 1,000 adults who had participated in a long-term previous study where they had been asked about their cannabis use over a 20-year period. Study participants provided blood samples on two occasions during that time, at the 15- and 20-year points. They were aged between 18 and 30 at baseline, or ‘year 0’.
Using these blood samples from five years apart, Hou and her team looked at the epigenetic changes, specifically DNA methylation levels, of people who had used cannabis recently or for a long time.
