Early cannabis use, polygenic risk score for schizophrenia, and brain maturation in adolescence

Leon French, Courtney Gray, Gabriel Leonard, Michel Perron, G. Bruce Pike, Louis Richer, Jean R. Séguin, Suzanne Veillette, C. John Evans, Eric Artiges, Tobias Banaschewski, Arun W L Bokde, Uli Bromberg, Ruediger Bruehl, Christian Buchel, Anna Cattrell, Patricia J. Conrod, Herta Flor, Vincent Frouin, Jurgen GallinatHugh Garavan, Penny Gowland, Andreas Heinz, Herve Lemaitre, Jean Luc Martinot, Frauke Nees, Dimitri Papadopoulos Orfanos, Melissa Marie Pangelinan, Luise Poustka, Marcella Rietschel, Michael N. Smolka, Henrik Walter, Robert Whelan, Nic J. Timpson, Gunter Schumann, George Davey Smith, Zdenka Pausova, Tomáš Paus*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

141 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

IMPORTANCE Cannabis use during adolescence is known to increase the risk for schizophrenia in men. Sex differences in the dynamics of brain maturation during adolescence may be of particular importance with regard to vulnerability of the male brain to cannabis exposure. OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether the association between cannabis use and cortical maturation in adolescents is moderated by a polygenic risk score for schizophrenia. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Observation of 3 population-based samples included initial analysis in 1024 adolescents of both sexes from the Canadian Saguenay Youth Study (SYS) and follow-up in 426 adolescents of both sexes from the IMAGEN Study from 8 European cities and 504 male youth from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) based in England. A total of 1577 participants (aged 12-21 years; 899 [57.0%] male) had (1) information about cannabis use; (2) imaging studies of the brain; and (3) a polygenic risk score for schizophrenia across 108 genetic loci identified by the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Data analysis was performed from March 1 through December 31, 2014. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Cortical thickness derived from T1-weighted magnetic resonance images. Linear regression tests were used to assess the relationships between cannabis use, cortical thickness, and risk score. RESULTS Across the 3 samples of 1574 participants, a negative association was observed between cannabis use in early adolescence and cortical thickness in male participants with a high polygenic risk score. This observation was not the case for low-risk male participants or for the low- or high-risk female participants. Thus, in SYS male participants, cannabis use interacted with risk score vis-à-vis cortical thickness (P = .009); higher scores were associated with lower thickness only in males who used cannabis. Similarly, in the IMAGEN male participants, cannabis use interacted with increased risk score vis-à-vis a change in decreasing cortical thickness from 14.5 to 18.5 years of age (t137 = -2.36; P = .02). Finally, in the ALSPAC high-risk group of male participants, those who used cannabis most frequently (≥61 occasions) had lower cortical thickness than those who never used cannabis (difference in cortical thickness, 0.07 [95%CI, 0.01-0.12]; P = .02) and those with light use (

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1002-1011
Number of pages10
JournalJAMA Psychiatry
Volume72
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2015

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