People under age 50 who use marijuana are more vulnerable to experiencing adverse cardiovascular events compared with nonusers, according to the results of a large observational study.
“The striking thing is that we found that there were risks in every single cardiovascular endpoint that we looked at: MI, heart failure, all-cause mortality. Everything had a risk, with the highest [being for] MI,” said Ibrahim Kamel, MD (St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Boston, MA).
Over a mean follow-up of about 36 months for cannabis users and 44 months for nonusers, the risk ratio (RR) was elevated to 6.18 (95% CI 4.89-7.82) for MI and 4.33 (95% CI 3.41-5.49) for ischemic stroke, Kamel and colleagues report in their paper published yesterday in JACC: Advances . Kamel is also presenting a meta-analysis on cannabis and acute MI risk at next week’s upcoming American College of Cardiology 2025 Scientific Session.
Currently, medical marijuana is legal in 39 US states, three territories, and the District of Columbia, and recreational marijuana use is legal in 24 states and the District of Columbia. With cannabis use becoming more and more commonplace, Kamel said physicians should be asking younger patients about their use of it.
“Clinicians should understand that this is a risk factor, and they should screen for it, especially if a younger patient is coming from the ER with a cardiovascular concern. [The patient] may not understand that it is a risk factor,” he said. “A lot of times people say no when asked about smoking, but then when you go further and ask them ‘Okay, but are you using cannabis?’ they will say yes.”
Stanton Glantz, PhD, an outspoken critic of the tobacco industry who is now retired from the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California San Francisco, told TCTMD that the findings are similar to a paper they published last year showing that daily cannabis users had higher risks of MI, stroke, or a composite of those two outcomes plus coronary heart disease compared with nonusers.
Glantz said while a few things are unclear in the new analysis, including the types of cannabis products […]
Cannabis Use Again Tied to Increased CVD Risk in Young People
