Genetic predisposition to schizophrenia associated with increased use of cannabis
Open accessAbstract
Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug worldwide. With debate surrounding the legalization and control of use, investigating its health risks has become a pressing area of research. One established association is that between cannabis use and schizophrenia, a debilitating psychiatric disorder affecting ~1% of the population over their lifetime. Although considerable evidence implicates cannabis use as a component cause of schizophrenia, it remains unclear whether this is entirely due to cannabis directly raising risk of psychosis, or whether the same genes that increases psychosis risk may also increase risk of cannabis use. In a sample of 2082 healthy individuals, we show an association between an individual's burden of schizophrenia risk alleles and use of cannabis. This was significant both for comparing those who have ever versus never used cannabis (P=2.6 × 10(-4)), and for quantity of use within users (P=3.0 × 10(-3)). Although directly predicting only a small amount of the variance in cannabis use, these findings suggest that part of the association between schizophrenia and cannabis is due to a shared genetic aetiology. This form of gene-environment correlation is an important consideration when calculating the impact of environmental risk factors, including cannabis use.
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It seems unlikely that shared genetic effects would explain the association between cannabis and psychosis, given the small proportion of variance in cannabis use explained by common genetic variants for schizophrenia.
“Shared genetic effects have also not been adequately adjusted for though it seems unlikely that this would explain the association observed given the small proportion of variance in cannabis use explained by common genetic variants for schizophrenia (24).”
From Association Between Cannabis and Psychosis: Epidemiologic Evidence (2016) · cites this paper as [24]
The Discussion reports that schizophrenia polygenic risk profiles explain only a small proportion of variance in cannabis use. But it concludes that shared genetic effects account for at least part of the cannabis–schizophrenia association; it does not conclude that they are unlikely to explain the observed association. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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References 44 · Cited by 196
- Authors
- Power, R. A., Verweij, K. J. H., Zuhair, M., Montgomery, G. W., Henders, A. K., Heath, A. C., Madden, P. A. F., Medland, S. E., Wray, N. R., & Martin, N. G.
- Affiliations
- The University of Queensland (AU)
- Amsterdam Public Health (NL)
- King's College London (GB)
- QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute (AU)
- Washington University in St. Louis (US)
- Corresponding author
- Power, R A
- ORCID
- Venue
- Molecular Psychiatry
- Published
- 2014-06-24
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1201-1204
- ISSN
- 1359-4184 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-5578
- PMC
- PMC4382963
- OpenAlex
- W2140424907
- Cited by
- 196
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 32 · 2016: 28 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 3
- FWCI
- 19.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Molecular Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- VU Research Portal (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Digital Academic REpository of VU University Amsterdam (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion)
- Pure Amsterdam UMC (submittedVersion)
- Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- National Institute for Health and Care Research
- King's College London
- ZonMw (31160212)
- National Institutes of Health (389875, QLG2-CT-2002-01254, AA11998, DA012854, AA07728)
- Medical Research Council
- Australian Research Council (DP0343921)
- National Health and Medical Research Council (A7960034, 496739, A79906588, 628911, 389927, 389891, 552485, 1047956, DP0212016, 552498, 442981, 389938, 241944, 339462, 442915, 389875, DA019951, A79801419, DP0770096, 389892)
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA11998, R37AA007728, K05AA017688, R01AA010249, R01AA013321, P50AA011998, AA13320, AA13321, AA 07580, AA17688, R01AA007728, T32AA007580, R01AA013320, R01AA014041, AA14041, R01AA007535, AA-07728)
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (R56DA012854, DA 019951, DA018267, R01DA023668, R01DA018660, R01DA018267, DA018660, K08DA019951, R01DA012854, DA23668, DA 012854)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pharmacology › Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Schizophrenia research and treatment
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
- Keywords
- schizophrenia, cannabis use, genetic susceptibility, gene-environment correlation, shared genetic aetiology, psychosis risk, illicit drug use
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Alleles, Australia, Marijuana Abuse, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Psychotic Disorders, Registries, Risk, Schizophrenia, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Multifactorial Inheritance, Young Adult
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