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Marijuana use may increase the chances of developing an often temporary but still frightening heart condition, suggests new preliminary research presented this week at the annual American Heart Association Meeting.
Researchers analyzed records from the country's largest database on hospital stays, called the National Inpatient Sample (NIS). They looked at over 33,000 people hospitalized with stress cardiomyopathy, better known as "broken heart syndrome," from 2003 to 2011. When they focused on the 210 patients who reported using marijuana soon before they experienced its telltale symptoms, which closely resemble a heart attack, they found noticeable differences between them and the typical sufferer. Not only were these patients often younger men instead of older women, but they had fewer known risk factors for the condition, like high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes. They were also slightly more likely to go into cardiac arrest and require an implanted defibrillator to prevent later cardiac events (2.4 percent vs 0.6 percent).
These differences could indicate that marijuana alone can increase the risk of stress cardiomyopathy, the researchers concluded. After accounting for other known factors, they estimated that users were nearly twice as likely to develop it than non-users.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:30PM
something doesn't add up here.
I'm still on my first cup of Tea so I'll be the first to say I'm probably not firing on all cylinders so bear with me adn don't expect too much cognitive thinking.
So they looked 33,000 people who already had issues, then looked at 210 who said they smoked Cannabis just before it started and didn't have the normal indicators and they concluded that smoking Cannabis increases the risk of getting heart related issues.
Given that just in America there are more than 30+ million who smoke Cannabis shouldn't there be far more cases that would have flagged a possible connection long ago?
sounds like more of the FUD that the DOJ shoveled around with their D.A.R.E. program back in the day.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by melikamp on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:04PM
Yeah, two things:
First, no text. Obviously, the authors are afraid of the real peer review, and would rather sit comfortably behind the paywall, preventing the public and the world-wide scientific community from looking at the research. The supporting data set is also unavailable, it seems. For my money, this is enough to discard the conclusions wholesale, lest we encourage more researchers to do pretend science in the age of the net.
Second, even if we give them the benefit of the doubt, they themselves say in the abstract, the mostly young marijuana users "more often suffered from depression (32.9%-vs-14.5%), psychosis (11.9%-vs-3.8%), anxiety disorder (28.4%-vs-16.2%), alcoholism (13.3%-vs-2.8%), tobacco use (73.3%-vs-28.6%) and poly-substance abuse (11.4%-vs-0.3%)", and so while marijuana use was established to be a predictor, it looks like these young people were poisoning themselves at a significantly higher rate and in many different ways, so we can fully expect other confounding variables making an impact, while not being taken into account by the study.
IMHO, this is a perfect example of a study that the public and the policy makers should ignore until it is replicated with a lot more care giving to isolating marijuana use from other variables, and published in a way that allows 21st century peer review.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:05PM
One final point: As the ever-popular mantra goes, "correlation does not equal causation". Specifically, just because pot use and mental health problems are linked doesn't mean that the pot leads to the mental health problems. There are 2 other very reasonable possibilities:
1. People with mental health problems like depression are more likely to use pot because it tends to relieve the symptoms. Dope because a self-medication tool.
2. People who use pot and have mental health problems are linked by some other factor, e.g. abusive parents, lead poisoning, or being stuck in the middle of nowhere in Colorado with nothing to do.
This sure looks like "research" that started with the premise of "drugs are bad, m'kay" and worked backwards to find evidence to justify that position. I don't touch the stuff myself, but I sure wish I didn't have to help pay for the cottage industry of manufacturing evidence to justify the totally silly Schedule I classification of THC.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Offtopic) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:57PM
I wanna see who is writing the checks myself, as this reminds me of the "ZOMG vaping products create formaldehyde!" articles. When people asked what SHOULD have been simple questions any researcher should answer, like 1.- What products were used? 2.- What voltages? 3.- what was the mixture of PG and VG? 4.- How were the samples taken? All anybody got back for a couple weeks were crickets. It was only when one of the researchers denounced the findings did we find out what they REALLY did, which was take a 3 year old gas station vaporizer nobody sold anymore designed for low voltage "vape pen" style devices and strapped it to a 75w mech mod* and cranked it to over 12w. A member of the vape community recreated the test and filmed it and the temp of what was coming out was over 500f and the formaldehyde they detected was literally the device melting under the insane amount of power they were pumping to it.
Considering that marijuana academic studies have been found to be paid for by drug companies pushing painkillers [vice.com] and the PACs against legalizing were paid for by a combination of alcohol companies, drug companies, and the prison industry? I wanna see who wrote the checks, because as we have seen time and time and time again you can get a scientist to come up with a "study" that proves the product you don't like is harmful if you write a big enough check.
*.- For those that don't know what a "mech mod" is or why they specifically had to use one? Every modern battery unit sold today has built in overvoltage/wattage protection so if someone doesn't know what they are doing and tries to crank the volts/watts too high for the tank they have on? The unit won't fire and will pop up a warning on the screen stating why. A mech mod is an expensive specialized form of battery unit that is for the DIY community, the kind that build their own coils from scratch and know Ohm's law like the back of their hand. These units do NOT have overvoltage/wattage because they are designed for people who know what they are doing and are using high wattage custom coils, which let them crank the wattage MUCH higher than what they could reach on any normal battery.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @11:47AM
Link to actual abstract and results,
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/134/Suppl_1/A14100 [ahajournals.org]
You know, comparison of actual groups of people? You know, from medical records. And based on these records, you get these results. It was *ONE* google search away.