Marijuana Ups Heart Attack, Stroke Risk

A study by US government researchers suggests that people who abuse marijuana might be putting themselves at increased risk of a heart attack or stroke. This happens because the drug increases the blood levels of a particular protein.

Dr. Jean Lud Cadet and colleagues at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, carried out the research. Using a small study population of 18 long-term, heavy marijuana users and 24 other people who did not use the drug, the researchers studied the effects of the drug on the heart.

All the users smoked 78 to 350 marijuana cigarettes every week. The researchers excluded people with major medical or psychiatric illness, alcoholics and abusers of drugs such as cocaine or heroine from their study. While there have been several studies on the effects of marijuana on the brain, Dr. Cadet’s team measured blood protein levels to check if marijuana did affect any other parts of the body.

They found that the levels of a protein called apolipoprotein C-III were 30% higher in marijuana users compared to non-users. Apolipoprotein C-III is an important constituent of the body’s metabolism of triglycerides – body fats. Higher levels of the protein lead to higher levels of triglycerides.

When triglyceride levels in the body increase, it can lead to hardening of the arteries or thickening of the artery walls, which in turn increases the risk of stroke, heart attack and heart disease. The only draw back of the study was that the researchers did not check if the marijuana users already had heart disease.

“Chronic marijuana use is not only causing people to get high, it’s actually causing long-term adverse effects in patients who use too much of the drug,” Dr. Cadet said about their study published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. “Chronic marijuana abuse is not so benign.”

According to the researchers, overproduction of apolipoprotein is on account of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana which over stimulates marijuana receptors in the liver. Dr. Cadet believes higher levels of the protein could increase the risk for cardiac abnormalities, blood flow problems, heart attack and stroke in marijuana users.

While the study findings bring to light another example of long-term harm from marijuana, they have met stiff opposition from marijuana activists. According to Marijuana Policy Project, a US group supporting legal sales and regulation of marijuana, the study is flawed as it only covered heavy users of marijuana.

“I think the low end was 78 joints a week. That’s 10 or 11 joints a day,” said project spokesman Bruce Mirken. “We’re talking about people who are stoned all the time. We’re talking about the marijuana equivalent of the guy in the alley clutching a bottle of cheap wine. If you do anything to that level of excess, it might well have some untoward effects, whether it’s marijuana or wine or broccoli.”

Dr. Cadet on the other hand believes marijuana’s long-term harmful effects extend much beyond known issues such as impaired learning, poor memory retention and retrieval and perceptual abnormalities. But Mirken said, “Even if you take this finding at face value, it’s not at all clear that it has any relevance to the real world because there is still no data showing higher rates of mortality among marijuana smokers. If this was a significant cause of cardiovascular disease, where are the bodies?”

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