Less cannabis use helps improve functional outcomes

A decrease in the use of cannabis results in clinician-assessed improvement among individuals with cannabis use disorder, suggests a study.

Reductions in the amount and frequency of cannabis use showed a significant association with improvements in patient-reported Marijuana Problems Scale (MPS) severity and total scores. Cannabis use decrease also correlated with better scores on the Clinical Global Impressions (CGI) improvement (CGI-I) scale, but not on health-related quality of life (HRQOL).

Classification and regression tree (CART) models demonstrated better performance for CGI-I scores (72 percent to 75 percent correct classification), whereas other outcome measures did not perform as well (40 percent to 62 percent correct classification).

Notably, improvements on the CGI scale were observed in CART models at 74-percent decrease in cannabis use amounts and 47-percent reduction in use days.

“Reductions in cannabis use were associated with clinician-assessed improvement, which suggests that cannabis use reduction may yield benefit among individuals with cannabis use disorder,” the authors said. “These exploratory results extract a data-driven metric to inform future studies, clinicians, patients, and policy recommendations.”

In this study, the authors collated data from seven cannabis use disorder treatment trials conducted in the US (n=920, mean age 25 years, 30 percent female, 27 percent Black, 11 percent Hispanic/Latinx). The outcome measures were as follows: patient-reported MPS, HRQOL, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and the clinician-rated CGI severity and improvement scales.

The authors used generalized estimating equations to explore the relationship between changes in 4-week cannabis use and improvements in functional outcomes. They also constructed CART models to determine what reductions in cannabis use could be used as classifiers of improvement.