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Show Marijuana Researchers Uncover Chromosome Breakaqe af U of U Marijuana research begun in 1964 and brought to the University of Utah Medical Center three years ago has uncovered evidence of chromosome breakage in both light and heavy users of the drug. According to Dr. Morton Mor-ton A. Stenchever, chairman of the Department Depart-ment of obstetrics and Gynecology at the medical medi-cal center, those chromosome chro-mosome breakages could later be related to birth defects and even cancer. "We found a significant signifi-cant amount of chromosome chromo-some damage in most users" of marijuana who were studied under a privately funded research re-search project, said Dr. Stenchever. "And there wasn't much difference in heavy users and light users." He said light users were classified as those who used marijuana one time or less a week and heavy users took the drug two or more limes a week. The project used 49 individuals who regularly regu-larly used marijuana. They were balanced against 20 "controls," or persons who had not been exposed to any drugs or medications for six months prior to the study. The control group's purpose, said Dr. Stenchever, Sten-chever, was to test continually con-tinually the method for the incidence of chromosome chromo-some damage. The users and controls provided blood cultures which w ere examined for chromosome breaks and abnormal forms by Dr. Stenchever and two assistants. as-sistants. They found an average of 3.4 cells with breaks per one hundred cells in the user group,, while the control group yielded a normal average aver-age of 1.2 cells with breaks per 100 cells. In addition to finding no difference in chromosome chromo-some breakage between heavy and light users, Dr. Stenchever's research re-search showed no difference dif-ference in users of mixed drugs when compared com-pared to users of marijuana mari-juana only. Also, he said there was no difference between be-tween male and female users in the incidence of chromosome breakage. break-age. Dr. Stenchever added that there were increases increas-es in numbers of cells with abnormal chromosome chromo-some configurations in users when compared to the control subjects, but the numbers were too small to be significant. The implications of the research, he said, were that chromosome breakage could subsequently subse-quently be related to " birth defects and cancer, can-cer, and persons using marijuana on any regular reg-ular basis take the chance of having abnormal ab-normal offspring or de veloping forms of cancer. can-cer. He said he first became be-came interested in drug effects on chromosome integrity while at Case Western Reserve University Uni-versity College of Medicine Med-icine in the early 1900's. He has studied a number of drugs, includingtran-quilizers, includingtran-quilizers, LSD and sex steroids (portions of birth control pills). In a paper summarizing summar-izing the research, Dr. Stenchever noted: "Perhaps one of the more important questions ques-tions that these data raise is that the blame that has been placed on LSD as a chromosome breaking agent may indeed in-deed have belonged to marijuana. "It is now reasonably well accepted," he wrote, "that LSD in most cases is not the cause of chromosome damage." He said the confusion comes because be-cause most individuals using LSD had also been using other drugs, notably not-ably marijuana. "...It is possible that marijuana had indeed been the cause of the chromosome damage noted" in LSD users, he said. Dr. Stenchever pointed point-ed out figures from a study conducted by another an-other team of researchers research-ers outside Utah showed that in 140 women and their consorts who had admitted to the use of LSD, 148 pregnancies led to the birth of 83 live children, eight of whom had major congenital defects. de-fects. Out of the total, 53 women had therapeutic abortions and produced 14 embryos, four of whom had gross defects. "These patients were using other drugs and the most interesting observation ob-servation was that 100 per cent of them had used marijuana." Stenchever Sten-chever said of the study. |