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Marijuana use not associated with acute kidney injury
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SAN DIEGO — The odds of developing acute kidney injury did not differ between cannabis use vs. nonuse, according to data presented at ASN Kidney Week 2018.
“Synthetic cannabinoid use is associated with acute kidney injury (AKI),” Praveen Kumar Potukuchi, BPharm, MS, research data analyst II at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, told Healio Internal Medicine. “However, there are no studies which investigated the effects of marijuana/cannabis use on the incidence of AKI in patients with advanced chronic kidney disease.”
Potukuchi and colleagues conducted a study to determine the association between cannabis use and AKI. The researchers enrolled 2,416 United States veterans (mean age, 60.6 years; 97% men; 46.7% black; 76.4% with diabetes) who transitioned to dialysis between 2007 and 2014, received urine toxicology tests up to 1 year before dialysis and had serial serum creatinine levels measured within 7 days after the test. The analysis was adjusted for sociodemographics, comorbidities, medications and vital signs.
A total of 76 participants tested positive for cannabis alone, whereas the rest (n = 1,138) tested negative.
The researchers used KDIGO creatinine-based criteria to define AKI.
More than half (58.6%) of participants had AKI. The odds of AKI were 25% lower among cannabis users compared with nonusers; however, the difference was not statistically significant.
“With the current legalization of marijuana and subsequent increase in its use, it’s important to understand the effects of its use in different scenarios better,” Potukuchi said. “The results of this study that there is no significant association between its use and AKI in patients with advanced CKD are somewhat comforting, but larger studies will be needed in order to have a definitive answer.” – by Alaina Tedesco
Reference:
Potukuchi PK, et al. Abstract: FR-PO044. Presented at: ASN Kidney Week; Oct. 23-28, 2018; San Diego.
Disclosure: Potukuchi reports that this study was supported by grant 5U01DK102163 to co-authors Csaba P. Kovesdy and Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh and was the result of work supported with resources and the use of facilities at the Memphis VA Medical Center and the Long Beach VA Medical Center. Support for VA/CMS data was provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, Office of Research and Development, Health Services Research and Development, VA Information Resource Center (project numbers SDR 02-237 and 98-004).