High-potency cannabis and incident psychosis: correcting the causal assumption - The Lancet Psychiatry

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Marta Di Forti and colleagues

1

The contribution of cannabis use to variation in the incidence of psychotic disorder across Europe (EU-GEI): a multicentre case-control study.

claim that the frequency of cannabis use and cannabis potency are responsible for substantial variation in the incidence of psychotic disorders. The authors assume that cannabis causes psychosis or psychotic symptoms without acknowledging compelling, alternative hypotheses.

2

An overview of systematic reviews on cannabis and psychosis: discussing apparently conflicting results.

Most reports examining associations between cannabis and psychosis have been unable to adjust for confounding that arises from correlated genetic and environmental individual differences. This oversight includes the common omission of appropriate methods for resolving causality (eg, random assignment to case and control conditions, discordant twin pairs, propensity score matching, or recently advanced genome-based restricted maximum likelihood methods). Findings of our own and others illustrate that cannabis use might be higher among individuals with a genetic liability that predisposes such individuals to cannabis use and the development of psychosis or psychotic disorders. Giordano and colleagues'

3

The association between cannabis abuse and subsequent schizophrenia: a Swedish national co-relative control study.

co-relative case-control design, which extrapolated data for monozygotic twin pairs, reported that a large portion of the association between cannabis abuse and schizophrenia was not causal, but instead confounded by shared familial factors. Despite increases in the prevalence of cannabis use over a 30-year period in Australia, Degenhardt and colleagues

4

Testing hypotheses about the relationship between cannabis use and psychosis.

found no evidence of any notable increase in schizophrenia. Based on our recent meta-analysis of the largest genome-wide association study of lifetime cannabis use to date (n=184 765), we estimated a genome-wide genetic correlation of 0·25 (SE 0·03, p<0·0001) with schizophrenia risk, indicating that genetic risk factors for cannabis use and schizophrenia are positively correlated.

5

GWAS of lifetime cannabis use reveals new risk loci, genetic overlap with psychiatric traits, and a causal influence of schizophrenia.

This correlation could be explained by pleiotropic, causal, or reverse causal mechanisms. Mendelian randomisation is an approach that uses genetic variants associated with a modifiable exposure to estimate the causal relationship between variables. In our meta-analysis, we applied bidirectional mendelian randomisation and found a consistent pattern of evidence supporting a causal effect of schizophrenia risk on lifetime cannabis use.

5

GWAS of lifetime cannabis use reveals new risk loci, genetic overlap with psychiatric traits, and a causal influence of schizophrenia.

By contrast, we found little evidence for any causal effect of cannabis use on schizophrenia risk. We acknowledged the lower power of the instrumental variable for lifetime cannabis use,

5

GWAS of lifetime cannabis use reveals new risk loci, genetic overlap with psychiatric traits, and a causal influence of schizophrenia.

and our analyses were not based on cannabis use frequency or potency. Nevertheless, our findings strongly suggested that associations between measures of cannabis use and psychosis or psychotic disorders are far more nuanced than Di Forti and colleagues assume. In addition to correlated genetic liabilities, indirect and bidirectional processes are likely to affect the associations between cannabis use, misuse, and psychotic disorders. By not acknowledging the alternative, compelling and plausible mechanisms,

3

The association between cannabis abuse and subsequent schizophrenia: a Swedish national co-relative control study.

Di Forti and colleagues' conclusion regarding the harmful effect of high-potency cannabis use on mental health is likely to be overestimated.

This online publication has been corrected. The corrected version first appeared at thelancet.com/psychiatry on June 7, 2019

We declare no competing interests.

References

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    The contribution of cannabis use to variation in the incidence of psychotic disorder across Europe (EU-GEI): a multicentre case-control study.

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    • Giordano GN
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    The association between cannabis abuse and subsequent schizophrenia: a Swedish national co-relative control study.

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    Testing hypotheses about the relationship between cannabis use and psychosis.

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    GWAS of lifetime cannabis use reveals new risk loci, genetic overlap with psychiatric traits, and a causal influence of schizophrenia.

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Article Info

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30174-9

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© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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