Hello, everyone. My name is Brian Kachikian and I will be sharing the research I conducted with Dr. Sneha Ochera on sleep complaints in adult prescription opioid users compared to marijuana users. We found it important to conduct this research as many patients dealing with chronic pain are often prescribed opioids when other medications like NSAIDs or muscle relaxers no longer provide relief. However, opioids are known for disrupting normal sleep patterns by reducing both REM and slow-wave sleep. This disruption affects the body's ability to restore itself, which can exacerbate both acute and chronic diseases. It has also been found in previous research that these sleep disturbances can increase the risk of relapse into drug use, which is a significant concern. Given this negative effect of opioids in addition to several others, there's been a growing interest in alternative pain treatments. One of these alternative treatments is marijuana, which may offer effective pain relief with fewer side effects. So understanding how these treatments compare, especially in terms of sleep disturbances and side effects, is crucial for physicians to make informed decisions about patient care. Our objective in this project was pretty straightforward. We wanted to compare the frequency of reported sleep disturbances between opioid users and marijuana users. To do this, we conducted a cross-sectional study using data from the 2015 to 2016 National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey, better known as NHANES. Specifically, we analyzed data from 763 participants who responded to sections of three NHANES questionnaires, which were focusing on sleep disorders, drug use, and prescription medication use. Out of these patients, 336 were found to be prescribed opioid medications, while 427 reported using marijuana in the past week. To analyze the data, we used a chi-square test of independence to see if there was a significant difference in reported sleep disturbances between the two groups. We also performed a two-sample t-test to check for any significant difference in the average hours slept between these groups. So after reviewing the data, we found that 187 out of 335 participants prescribed opioids reported sleep issues to their physician, which is over half of the participants, or 55.8% to be exact. Compare that to 131 out of 426 participants that used marijuana in the past seven days that reported issues to their physician, which was 30.8% of participants in that group. After plugging these values into the formulas required for a chi-square test, it showed a significant difference in the proportion of reported sleep issues between opioid and marijuana users, with a p-value of 3.39 times 10 to the negative 12, which implies that it is virtually impossible that the difference between the reported sleep complaints between these two groups was due to chance. We were also interested in if there was any difference in the quantity of time spent sleeping between these two groups, so we looked at the average hours slept for both groups. We found that those prescribed opioids slept an average of 7.9 hours, while recent marijuana users slept an average of 7.7 hours. The two-sample t-test we conducted on this data did not find a significant difference between the two groups, with a p-value of 0.13. Our results suggest that opioid use is more strongly linked to the prevalence of sleep disturbances, although the total amount of time spent sleeping does not differ much from that of marijuana users. This indicates that opioids affect sleep quality more than sleep duration. The significant difference in the proportion of reported sleep disturbances really underscores the need for alternative pain management strategies that are less likely to negatively impact sleep quality. Based on these results, marijuana could be a promising option for patients concerned about sleep quality while managing pain. Of course, further research is needed to fully understand the long-term effects of marijuana use on sleep and its effectiveness as a pain management alternative. Listed in the bottom right corner of our poster are the references we used to conduct this research and for this presentation. Thank you for listening, and I welcome any questions you may have.

opioid users

marijuana users

sleep disturbances

pain management

NHANES study