“It is unclear how marijuana use could place an individual at increased risk for prediabetes yet not diabetes”, the researchers said in a news release.
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“Marijuana use was associated with the development and prevalence of prediabetes”, said the study led by Mike Bancks from University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis, US. While inhaling marijuana is the most common way to use the drug, he cautioned that his study did not specify method of use, which may also impact the effects of this drug. According to them, it’s possible that people who were more likely to develop diabetes were left out in the study because they require individuals free of diabetes at the start of the follow-up period.
After adjusting for other behavioral, lifestyle and physiological characteristics, the authors found that current marijuana users had 65% increased odds of having prediabetes. Or the unusual outcome may be indicative of the fact that the researchers had to exclude some people with higher levels of drug use and a greater likelihood of developing diabetes “due to missing information on important factors”.
The findings suggest that marijuana use may adversely affect a person’s metabolic health in the long term.
However, it is not linked to increasing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Individuals in the CARDIA study were 18-30 years of age at study recruitment in 1985-1986 and are now in their 30th year of observation.
However, researchers failed to establish a direct link between marijuana use and type 2 diabetes.
All of these values have been provided by the American Diabetes Association criteria. If you have prediabetes and do nothing to correct the condition, you will likely progress to diabetes in 10 years or less, according to Mayo Clinic.
Bancks suggested that the lack of a perceived association may result from the exclusion of people with higher diabetes risk and higher marijuana use.
In an email exchange with MedPage Today, Bancks wrote that the objective measurement of prediabetes and diabetes status in the CARDIA study using multiple metabolic measures was a novel strength of the newly published study, along with the prospective and concomitant assessment of the association between marijuana and diabetes and prediabetes.
Indeed, “there are many questions about the health effects of marijuana use where the answers are unknown”, Bancks said.
The authors then did further analyses where marijuana use was assessed prior to the development or not of prediabetes.
‘Specifically, occurrence of prediabetes in middle adulthood was significantly elevated for individuals who reported using marijuana in excess of 100 times by young adulthood.
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The research was funded by grands from the National Institutes of Health.
