Cannabinoid Genotoxicity

This talk is presented by Professor Stuart Reece who together with Professor Gary Hulse has published many cutting-edge papers recently on the epidemiology of cannabinoids and indeed the team continues to publish actively in this field. Numerous cannabinoids have been known to be genotoxic by many mechanisms for fifty years with damage to DNA, chromosomes, the epigenome, and the metabolism on which genetic and epigenetic health are based all being well documented. This talk presents an overview of the epidemiology of cannabinoid genotoxicity as it relates to cancer and congenital anomaly data from the USA and Europe and elsewhere using advanced statistical techniques and the formal tools of causal inference to report not just associations but the quantitative criteria of epidemiological causal relationships. One particular feature is reproductive and inheritable benign and malignant genotoxic outcomes. The talk also focuses on the close relationship between laboratory-demonstrated genotoxicity with patterns of malignant and inherited disease amongst human populations. The implications for population health of widespread genotoxicity applied generally through the food chain for cellular and human aging across human populations based on the latest research developments is then considered. In all analyses, cannabinoids are shown to be much more genotoxic than tobacco or alcohol. Collectively these several large datasets strongly indicate that populations need to be carefully protected from pleiotropic cannabinoid genotoxicity in line with public health policies relating to all other potent genotoxins.

Video link: https://vimeo.com/657967352/bc24ae6c33

Speaker Details

Full Name
Stuart Reece

Position
MD

Bio
Dr. Stuart Reece is a family physician working in Brisbane in Australia where he runs a large clinic with a special interest in the medical treatment of drug addiction. He is interested both in the underlying pathophysiology of drug addiction – how drugs work in the body and why they are so destructive to long-term health – and also in the treatment of drug addiction including its radical cure. Dr. Reece has a long-standing interest in cannabinoids particularly as they relate to genotoxicity, epigenotoxicity, and chromosomal and mitochondrial toxicity which have downstream effects lasting for multiple generations. For these reasons, Dr Reece has published several epidemiological research papers on cannabis-induced genotoxicity as reflected in the incidence of both birth defects and cancer development both in exposed adults and in the offspring of exposed individuals and subsequent generations. Dr. Reece extensively uses advanced space-time statistical analytical techniques and the formal techniques of causal inference to analyze not just associations across space and time simultaneously but also to quantitatively evaluate the evidence for truly causal relationships. Dr. Reece was appointed and now re-appointed as a Professor in the School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences at both the University of Western Australia and Edith Cowan University in recognition of his many contributions which advance our understanding of the toxicopathophysiology and treatment of drug addiction in general and cannabinoid exposure in particular.