Marijuana May Temporarily Weaken Heart Muscles

Active marijuana users are more likely to have stress cardiomyopathy, according to new research.

Although marijuana has become increasingly available through local legalization, its effects—especially on cardiovascular health—are not well known.

To assess the cardiovascular outcomes of marijuana use, the researchers identified 33,343 hospital admissions for stress cardiomyopathy in the United States via the 2003-2011 Nationwide Inpatient Sample database.

Of the total, 210 (0.06%) were temporally related to active marijuana use.

The findings showed that marijuana use was more common among young people and men. People who used marijuana had a lower prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia. However, they were more likely to have depression, psychosis, anxiety disorder, alcoholism, tobacco use, and poly-substance abuse.

Although marijuana users were younger and had fewer cardiovascular risk factors, they were more likely to go into cardiac arrest during stress cardiomyopathy and were more likely to require an implanted defibrillator to detect and correct abnormal heart rhythms.

“Marijuana use is linked to [transient ventricular regional ballooning] in a distinct cohort of younger individuals and is associated with significant morbidity despite younger age and more favorable cardiac risk factor profile compared to [transient ventricular regional ballooning] in [non-marijuana users],” the researchers concluded.

—Amanda Balbi

Reference:

Singh A, Agrawal S, Fegley M, Manda Y, Nanda S, Shirani J. Abstract 14100: Marijuana (cannabis) use is an independent predictor of stress cardiomyopathy in younger men. Circulation. 2016;134:A14100. http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/134/Suppl_1/A14100. Accessed November 14, 2016.