Your Dose Of Medicine

Daily cannabis smoking of at least one marijuana cigarette per day in patients with chronic hepatitis C infection was strongly associated with liver fibrosis progression, according to a new French study of 211 patients presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. However, the study's "occasional" cannabis smokers - those having less than one cigarette per day - had no increased risk of progression of fibrosis.

Based on the findings, daily cannabis smoking should be avoided in patients with chronic hepatitis C. The daily cannabis smokers in the study were long-term users who averaged 16 years of daily marijuana intake. The study was "semiquantitative" because it's difficult to know exactly how much cannabis is being smoked by patients.

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