138
Views
0
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Short Communication

Reduced Urinary Opioid Levels from Pain Management Patients Associated with Marijuana Use

, , &
Pages 441-447 | Received 11 Apr 2019, Accepted 20 Jun 2019, Published online: 09 Sep 2019
 

Abstract

Aim: Marijuana use has been postulated to modulate opioid use, dependence and withdrawal. Broad target drug testing results provide a unique perspective to identify any potential interaction between marijuana use and opioid use. Materials & methods: Using a dataset of approximately 800,000 urine drug test results collected from pain management patients of a time from of multiple years, creatinine corrected opioid levels were evaluated to determine if the presence of the primary marijuana marker 11-nor-carboxy-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC-COOH) was associated with statistical differences in excreted opioid concentrations. Results & conclusion: For each of the opioids investigated (codeine, morphine, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, oxycodone, oxymorphone, fentanyl and buprenorphine), marijuana use was associated with statistically significant lower urinary opiate levels than in samples without indicators of marijuana use.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

G Janis, M Goggin and B Shahriar are paid employees of Laboratory Corporation of America. Andy Stead is an independent statistical contractor employed by Laboratory Corporation of America. Laboratory Corporation of America (Labcorp) performs clinical laboratory testing services. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Ethical conduct of research

The authors state that they have obtained appropriate institutional review board approval and that the mining of results was performed under an institutional review board approval exemption covering preexisting data from subjects which cannot be identified, directly or through identifiers linked to the subjects.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.