Frequent cannabis use by young people linked to decline in IQ
2021-01-28
(Press-News.org) Thursday, 28 January 2021: A study has found that adolescents who frequently use cannabis may experience a decline in Intelligence Quotient (IQ) over time. The findings of the research provide further insight into the harmful neurological and cognitive effects of frequent cannabis use on young people.
The paper, led by researchers at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, is published in Psychological Medicine.
The results revealed that there were declines of approximately 2 IQ points over time in those who use cannabis frequently compared to those who didn't use cannabis. Further analysis suggested that this decline in IQ points was primarily related to reduction in verbal IQ.
The research involved systematic review and statistical analysis on seven longitudinal studies involving 808 young people who used cannabis at least weekly for a minimum of 6 months and 5308 young people who did not use cannabis. In order to be included in the analysis each study had to have a baseline IQ score prior to starting cannabis use and another IQ score at follow-up. The young people were followed up until age 18 on average although one study followed the young people until age 38.
"Previous research tells us that young people who use cannabis frequently have worse outcomes in life than their peers and are at increased risk for serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Loss of IQ points early in life could have significant effects on performance in school and college and later employment prospects," commented senior author on the paper Professor Mary Cannon, Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Youth Mental Health, RCSI.
"Cannabis use during youth is of great concern as the developing brain may be particularly susceptible to harm during this period. The findings of this study help us to further understand this important public health issue," said Dr Emmet Power, Clinical Research Fellow at RCSI and first author on the study.
The study was carried out by researchers from the Department of Psychiatry, RCSI and Beaumont Hospital, Dublin (Prof Mary Cannon, Dr Emmet Power, Sophie Sabherwal, Dr Colm Healy, Dr Aisling O'Neill and Professor David Cotter).
The research was funded by a YouLead Collaborative Doctoral Award from the Health Research Board (Ireland) and a European Research Council Consolidator Award.
INFORMATION:
About RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences
Ranked number one globally for Good Health and Well-being in the Times Higher Education (THE) University Impact Rankings 2020, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences is an international not-for-profit university, with its headquarters in Dublin.
RCSI is exclusively focused on education and research to drive improvements in human health worldwide. It is among the top 250 universities worldwide in the World University Rankings (2021) and its research is ranked first in Ireland for citations. RCSI has been awarded Athena Swan Bronze accreditation for positive gender practice in higher education.
Visit the RCSI MyHealth Expert Directory to find the details of our experts across a range of healthcare issues and concerns. Recognising their responsibility to share their knowledge and discoveries to empower people with information that leads them to better health, these clinicians and researchers are willing to engage with the media in their area of expertise.
For more information, please contact:
Jane Butler, Senior Communications Officer, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences
janebutler@rcsi.ie| +353 87 7531877
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-01-28
New insight into how human brains detect and perceive different types of touch, such as fluttery vibrations and steady pressures, has been revealed by UCL scientists with the help of the ancient Chinese cooking ingredient, Szechuan pepper.
Humans have many different types of receptor cells in the skin that allow us to perceive different types of touch. For more than a century, scientists have puzzled over whether touch signals from each type of receptor are processed independently by the brain, or whether these different signals interact before reaching conscious perception.
For the study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, UCL researchers took a novel approach to this question by stimulating one type of touch receptor chemically, and another type mechanically. ...
2021-01-28
Investors' moods are affected by gloomy weather. New research from Copenhagen Business School recommends entrepreneurs looking for finance should be aware of the weather forecast at the time they want to launch their crowdfunding campaigns.
The researchers wanted to explore whether weather-induced moods can explain crowdfunders' contributions and focused on the role of investors' moods and emotions including day-to-day decisions on the crowdfunding platform Companisto.
"Financial investment plays a vital role in the success of an entrepreneurial venture ...
2021-01-28
Molecules consisting of many atoms are complex structures. The outer electrons are distributed among the different orbitals, and their shape and occupation determine the chemical behaviour and reactivity of the molecule. The configuration of these orbitals can be analysed experimentally. Synchrotron sources such as BESSY II provide a method for this purpose: Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS). However, to obtain information about the orbitals from experimental data, quantum chemical simulations are necessary. Typical computing times for larger molecules take weeks, even on high-performance computers.
Speeding up the evaluation
"Up to now, these calculations have mostly been carried out subsequent to the measurements", explains theoretical chemist Dr. Vinicius Vaz da Cruz, ...
2021-01-28
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden believe they have identified a gene variant that can cause cerebral small vessel disease and stroke. The study is published in Neurology Genetics.
"The patients we have studied are from the same extended family, and several of them have been diagnosed with cerebral small vessel disease and suffered strokes. After tissue examination and using genetic sequencing methods, we found that they were carriers of a new gene variant that could be connected to their diagnoses," says Andreea Ilinca, researcher at Lund University ...
2021-01-28
Recent events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, locust infestations, drought and labour shortages have disrupted food supply chains, endangering food security in the process. A recent study published in Nature Food shows that trade restrictions and stockpiling of supplies by a few key countries could create global food price spikes and severe local food shortages during times of threat.
'We quantified the potential effects of these co-occurring global and local shocks globally with their impacts on food security,' explains Aalto University Associate Professor Matti Kummu. The results of this research have critical ...
2021-01-28
A new type of rocket thruster that could take humankind to Mars and beyond has been proposed by a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).
The device would apply magnetic fields to cause particles of plasma, electrically charged gas also known as the fourth state of matter, to shoot out the back of a rocket and, because of the conservation of momentum, propel the craft forward. Current space-proven plasma thrusters use electric fields to propel the particles.
The new concept would accelerate the particles using magnetic reconnection, a process found throughout the universe, including the surface of the sun, in which magnetic ...
2021-01-28
Knowing how to predict the specific composition and cell design that would result in optimum performance is one of the greatest unresolved problems in materials science. This is, in part, due to the fact that the device performance depends on multiple factors.
Now, researchers from the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona, specialized on materials for energy applications, have collaborated with researchers from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili specialized in Artificial Intelligence, to combine the experimental data points that they gather with artificial intelligence algorithms ...
2021-01-28
Building on the promise of emerging therapies to deploy the body's "natural killer" immune cells to fight cancer, researchers at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center and U-M College of Engineering have gone one step further.
They've developed what is believed to be the first systematic way to catch natural killer cells and get them to release cancer-killing packets called exosomes. These nano-scale exosomes are thousands of times smaller than natural killer cells -- or NK cells for short -- and thus better able to penetrate cancer cells' defenses.
A proof-of-concept study in blood samples from five patients with non-small cell lung cancer demonstrated that the approach was able to capture natural killer cells on a microfluidic ...
2021-01-28
Paris, France, January 27th 2021 -- COVID-19 vaccine distribution has begun across the globe, while many countries are still struggling with the rampant rise of infections. Owkin, a French-American startup pioneering AI and Federated Learning in medical research, has been focusing it's COVID-19 research efforts on aspects of the pandemic that still require much public health attention, despite the arrival of an effective vaccine.
Efforts to support frontline health systems as they devote their resources to the influx of COVID-19 related hospitalizations, ...
2021-01-28
Seawater makes up about 96% of all water on earth, making it a tempting resource to meet the world's growing need for clean drinking water and carbon-free energy. And scientists already have the technical ability to both desalinate seawater and split it to produce hydrogen, which is in demand as a source of clean energy.
But existing methods require multiple steps performed at high temperatures over a lengthy period of time in order to produce a catalyst with the needed efficiency. That requires substantial amounts of energy and drives up the cost.
Researchers from the University of Houston have reported an oxygen evolving catalyst that takes just minutes to grow at room temperature on commercially available nickel foam. ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Frequent cannabis use by young people linked to decline in IQ
