ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Behav. Neurosci.
Sec. Emotion Regulation and Processing
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1549311
Inflammatory State Moderates Response to Cannabis on Negative Affect and Sleep Quality in Individuals with Anxiety
Provisionally accepted
- University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States
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Introduction: Inflammation has been implicated as an underlying pathology in negative affect and sleep disruption. Cannabinoids like delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) have demonstrated anti-inflammatory properties. This study aimed to assess if cannabis use altered cytokine concentration and whether inflammatory status moderated the influence of 4 weeks of cannabis use on negative affect and sleep quality in anxious individuals.Methods: Participants with mild or greater anxiety (n=147) were assigned to one of three cannabis chemovars (THC+CBD, THC, CBD), asked to consume their products ad libitum for 4 weeks, and were compared to a group of participants with anxiety who did not use cannabis (n=24). Measures of negative affect (Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21: DASS-21), sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index: PSQI), and plasma cytokine concentrations were measured at Baseline and Week-4. Multilevel modeling assessed if there were group-dependent changes in cytokine concentrations over time, and whether baseline inflammation moderated the association between cannabis use and both negative affect and sleep quality.Results: There were no group-dependent changes in cytokine concentrations throughout the study (p=0.12). It was observed that baseline inflammatory state moderated the group-by-time relationship for DASS-21 (p<0.001) and PSQI (p=0.04). In both models, chemovars higher in CBD produced more consistent improvements, while THC-associated improvements varied by baseline inflammatory state.Conclusions: These novel findings suggest that baseline inflammatory status influences the relationship between cannabis use, negative affect, and sleep quality in people with anxiety.
Keywords: thc, cbd, Cytokines, Depression, Anxiety, stress
Received: 30 Dec 2024; Accepted: 04 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lisano, Skrzynski, Giordano, Bryan and Bidwell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jonathon K Lisano, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States
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