{"id":213397,"date":"2025-05-06T21:11:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T02:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/cannabis-consumption-is-associated-with-lower-covid-19-severity-among-hospitalized-patients-a-retrospective-cohort-analysis"},"modified":"2025-05-06T21:11:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T02:11:52","slug":"cannabis-consumption-is-associated-with-lower-covid-19-severity-among-hospitalized-patients-a-retrospective-cohort-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/cannabis-consumption-is-associated-with-lower-covid-19-severity-among-hospitalized-patients-a-retrospective-cohort-analysis","title":{"rendered":"Cannabis consumption is associated with lower COVID-19 severity among hospitalized patients: a retrospective cohort analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/cannabis-consumption-is-associated-with-lower-covid-19-severity-among-hospitalized-patients-a-retrospective-cohort-analysis2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While cannabis is known to have immunomodulatory properties, the clinical consequences of its use on outcomes in COVID-19 have not been extensively evaluated. We aimed to assess whether cannabis users hospitalized for COVID-19 had improved outcomes compared to non-users.<\/p>\n<p>We conducted a retrospective analysis of 1831 patients admitted to two medical centers in Southern California with a diagnosis of COVID-19. We evaluated outcomes including NIH COVID-19 Severity Score, need for supplemental oxygen, ICU (intensive care unit) admission, mechanical ventilation, length of hospitalization, and in-hospital death for cannabis users and non-users. Cannabis use was reported in the patient\u2019s social history. Propensity matching was used to account for differences in age, body-mass index, sex, race, tobacco smoking history, and comorbidities known to be risk factors for COVID-19 mortality between cannabis users and non-users.<\/p>\n<p>Of 1831 patients admitted with COVID-19, 69 patients reported active cannabis use (4% of the cohort). Active users were younger (44 years vs. 62 years, p &lt; 0.001), less often diabetic (23.2% vs 37.2%, p &lt; 0.021), and more frequently active tobacco smokers (20.3% vs. 4.1%, p &lt; 0.001) compared to non-users. Notably, active users had lower levels of inflammatory markers upon admission than non-users\u2014CRP (C-reactive protein) (3.7 mg\/L vs 7.6 mg\/L, p &lt; 0.001), ferritin (282 \u03bcg\/L vs 622 \u03bcg\/L, p &lt; 0.001), D-dimer (468 ng\/mL vs 1,140 ng\/mL, p = 0.017), and procalcitonin (0.10 ng\/mL vs 0.15 ng\/mL, p = 0.001). Based on univariate analysis, cannabis users had significantly better outcomes compared to non-users as reflected in lower NIH scores (5.1 vs 6.0, p &lt; 0.001), shorter hospitalization (4 days vs 6 days, p &lt; 0.001), lower ICU admission rates (12% vs 31%, p &lt; 0.001), and less need for mechanical ventilation (6% vs 17%, p = 0.027).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While cannabis is known to have immunomodulatory properties, the clinical consequences of its use on outcomes in COVID-19 have not been extensively evaluated. We aimed to assess whether cannabis users hospitalized for COVID-19 had improved outcomes compared to non-users. We conducted a retrospective analysis of 1831 patients admitted to two medical centers in Southern California [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1901],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}