Chronic pancreatitis and cannabis use
Using nationally available data, this retrospective observational study looked for any correlation (positive or negative) with cannabis use and chronic pancreatitis (CP) outcomes. It was published in June 2025 in the Journal of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases.
They used the U.S. National Inpatient Sample (NIS) of data collected on hospital patients admitted from 2016 to 2020. 52,360 out of over 900,000 hospitalized patients (with CP) reported they were cannabis users (5.8%).
The outcomes measured:
- Sepsis
- Acute Kidney Injury (AKI)
- Deep vein thrombosis (DVT)
- Pulmonary embolism (PE)
- Intensive care (ICU) admission
- Acute pancreatitis (AP)
- Pancreatic cancer
Results:
After adjusting for confounding factors, cannabis use was associated with decreased odds of:
- In-hospital mortality: 53% lower (aOR=0.47, p<0.001)
- DVT: 29% lower (aOR=0.71, p<0.001)
- PE: 37% lower (aOR=0.622, p=0.002)
- ICU admission: 29% lower (aOR=0.705, p<0.001)
- pancreatic cancer: 27% lower (aOR=0.730, p=0.021)
- There was no difference in odds of AKI, sepsis, or AP.
Authors' conclusion:
Our study found that cannabis use is associated with reduced disease severity and better outcomes among patients hospitalized with CP.
The authors also noted that the data did not include the type of cannabis product, duration or amounts of cannabis used by the patients, and recommended more "granular" research in the future.
The abstract and link to the full-text PDF article are here at the journal website.
Source:
Sohal A, Thind N, Billing HS, Iqbal H, Menon R, Kumar V, Sohal A, Yang J. Cannabis Use and Outcomes in Patients with Chronic Pancreatitis: A National Inpatient Sample Analysis. J Gastrointestin Liver Dis. 2025 Jun 28;34(2):220-226. doi: 10.15403/jgld-6066. PMID: 40580529.