Cannabis found to reduce alcohol-induced liver disease, according to new study

It’s no secret that abusing alcohol can wreak havoc on your liver, but it’s not as widely known that cannabis can actually stem this effect. A surprising new study shows that people who abuse alcohol and also use cannabis have a reduced incidence of liver disease.

Alcohol abuse is a serious issue in America, causing around 88,000 people to die each year. It’s also behind around a third of all our nation’s traffic fatalities, which is a further 10,000 deaths annually. Nevertheless, alcohol consumption is actually increasing in the U.S., with one out of every eight Americans now estimated to be alcoholics.

The team of researchers, which was headed up by the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Adeyinka Charles Adejumo, wanted to find out if cannabis’s well-documented anti-inflammatory effects could help stunt the development of liver disease. They looked at the discharge records collected in the 2014 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, focusing on patients 18 and older who had a history of abusive alcohol use or who currently abuse alcohol.