“Recreational” Drug Abuse Associated with Failure to Mount a Proper Antibody Response after a Generalised Orthopoxvirus Infection

Abstract

Infections with orthopoxviruses usually lead to cross-protection among all species of the family. This has been a prerequisite for successful eradication of smallpox. Here we report the rare case of a 17-year-old male, who survived a generalised cowpox virus infection of unusual severity but surprisingly did not show a proper seroconversion. Only a very weak antibody production was observed in early and late serum samples, which initially appeared to be cowpox virus specific in immunofluorescence. No neutralising antibodies were detected and in Western blotting antibody specificity was restricted to the orthopoxvirus H3L protein only. The patient had been hospitalised for alcohol and cannabis intoxication 2 months prior to the orthopoxvirus infection and high levels of cannabinoids have been found repeatedly in the urine and upon one occasion also benzodiazepines. As these substances are known to interfere with antibody production and no immunodeficiencies were detected, drug-induced immunosuppression can be suspected as the most likely cause. Therefore a possible link between "soft" drug use and sufficient immunosuppression to warrant alterations in vaccine policies using live virus vaccines like smallpox vaccine should be further studied.

Human metabolites of synthetic cannabinoids JWH-018 and JWH-073 bind with high affinity and act as potent agonists at cannabinoid type-2 receptors

“…Prolonged marijuana use is associated with immune-suppression (Klein et al , 2003; Klein and Cabral, 2006) and chronic cannabis use has been reported to result in failure to mount an appropriate immune response to certain viruses (Huemer et al , 2007). Such effects on the immune system produced by Δ 9 -THC has been suggested to occur via activation of CB 2 Rs (McKallip et al , 2002).…”

Effects of cannabinoids and their receptors on viral infections

“…In immunomodulation of cannabinoids in viral infections where viral replication is sensitive to the anti‐viral responses, activation of CB receptors increases progression of the disease by inhibition of immune anti‐viral responses. For example; viral infection by orthopoxvirus [Huemer et al, ], vaccinia [Huemer et al, ], HCV [Sun et al, ], HSV‐1 [Fischer‐Stenger et al, ], HSV‐2 [Cabral et al, 1987], Kaposi's sarcoma‐associated herpes virus [Zhang et al, ], HIV, and feline leukemia [Wang and Ho, ] increases during CB receptor activation.…”

Cannabinoids and Viral Infections

“…In HCV infections, clinical studies have shown a profound co-morbidity of recreational cannabinoid use, for disease progression [54,56]. One case report of Cowpox infection, a very rare human pathogen, indicated that recreational use of cannabinoids was associated with generalized infection and very poor immune responses to the virus [40]. …”