St Cross Junior Dean publishes groundbreaking research on effects of Cannabis use

Junior Dean and Dphil Candidate Saba Ishrat

Cannabis use has been rising globally following its legalization for medical and recreational purposes, yet its potential effects on the brain in older adults remain unclear.  

St Cross Junior Dean and DPhil Candidate at Department of Psychiatry, Saba Ishrat has published a paper on her groundbreaking research on the subject, alongside researchers from Yale School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare Center, as well as the University of Oxford. Their work is the largest observational study to date on the relationship between cannabis use and brain structure and function, and the first to use genetic data to assess causality. 

When discussing what their research found Saba says

Our findings from the observational analysis suggest that lifetime cannabis use is associated with several measures of brain structure and function in later life, particularly with lower white matter integrity, especially in the corpus callosum, as well as weaker resting-state functional connectivity in brain regions underlying the default mode and central executive networks. However, genetic analyses in their study did not find evidence that these observed associations are causal.

The research paper published in BMJ Mental Health in October this year has at last count been published in 39 news publications around the world including The Telegraph and MedicalXpress, showing the importance of the research.