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Substance abuse and the risk of severe COVID-19: Mendelian randomization confirms the causal role of opioids but hints a negative causal effect for cannabinoids

Since the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic, our understanding of the underlying disease mechanism and factors associated with the disease severity has dramatically increased. A recent study investigated the relationship between substance use disorders (SUD) and the risk of severe COVID-19 in th...

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Autores principales: Jabalameli, M. Reza, Zhang, Zhengdong D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9792508/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36583016
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2022.1070428
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author Jabalameli, M. Reza
Zhang, Zhengdong D.
author_facet Jabalameli, M. Reza
Zhang, Zhengdong D.
author_sort Jabalameli, M. Reza
collection PubMed
description Since the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic, our understanding of the underlying disease mechanism and factors associated with the disease severity has dramatically increased. A recent study investigated the relationship between substance use disorders (SUD) and the risk of severe COVID-19 in the United States and concluded that the risk of hospitalization and death due to COVID-19 is directly correlated with substance abuse, including opioid use disorder (OUD) and cannabis use disorder (CUD). While we found this analysis fascinating, we believe this observation may be biased due to comorbidities (such as hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease) confounding the direct effect of SUD on severe COVID-19 illness. To answer this question, we sought to investigate the causal relationship between substance abuse and medication-taking history (as a proxy trait for comorbidities) with the risk of COVID-19 adverse outcomes. Our Mendelian randomization analysis confirms the causal relationship between OUD and severe COVID-19 illness but suggests an inverse causal effect for cannabinoids. Considering that COVID-19 mortality is largely attributed to disturbed immune regulation, the possible modulatory impact of cannabinoids in alleviating cytokine storms merits further investigation.
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spelling pubmed-97925082022-12-28 Substance abuse and the risk of severe COVID-19: Mendelian randomization confirms the causal role of opioids but hints a negative causal effect for cannabinoids Jabalameli, M. Reza Zhang, Zhengdong D. Front Genet Genetics Since the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic, our understanding of the underlying disease mechanism and factors associated with the disease severity has dramatically increased. A recent study investigated the relationship between substance use disorders (SUD) and the risk of severe COVID-19 in the United States and concluded that the risk of hospitalization and death due to COVID-19 is directly correlated with substance abuse, including opioid use disorder (OUD) and cannabis use disorder (CUD). While we found this analysis fascinating, we believe this observation may be biased due to comorbidities (such as hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease) confounding the direct effect of SUD on severe COVID-19 illness. To answer this question, we sought to investigate the causal relationship between substance abuse and medication-taking history (as a proxy trait for comorbidities) with the risk of COVID-19 adverse outcomes. Our Mendelian randomization analysis confirms the causal relationship between OUD and severe COVID-19 illness but suggests an inverse causal effect for cannabinoids. Considering that COVID-19 mortality is largely attributed to disturbed immune regulation, the possible modulatory impact of cannabinoids in alleviating cytokine storms merits further investigation. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-12-13 /pmc/articles/PMC9792508/ /pubmed/36583016 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2022.1070428 Text en Copyright © 2022 Jabalameli and Zhang. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Genetics
Jabalameli, M. Reza
Zhang, Zhengdong D.
Substance abuse and the risk of severe COVID-19: Mendelian randomization confirms the causal role of opioids but hints a negative causal effect for cannabinoids
title Substance abuse and the risk of severe COVID-19: Mendelian randomization confirms the causal role of opioids but hints a negative causal effect for cannabinoids
title_full Substance abuse and the risk of severe COVID-19: Mendelian randomization confirms the causal role of opioids but hints a negative causal effect for cannabinoids
title_fullStr Substance abuse and the risk of severe COVID-19: Mendelian randomization confirms the causal role of opioids but hints a negative causal effect for cannabinoids
title_full_unstemmed Substance abuse and the risk of severe COVID-19: Mendelian randomization confirms the causal role of opioids but hints a negative causal effect for cannabinoids
title_short Substance abuse and the risk of severe COVID-19: Mendelian randomization confirms the causal role of opioids but hints a negative causal effect for cannabinoids
title_sort substance abuse and the risk of severe covid-19: mendelian randomization confirms the causal role of opioids but hints a negative causal effect for cannabinoids
topic Genetics
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9792508/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36583016
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2022.1070428
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