According to a new meta-analysis of over 183 million people the risk of adverse cardiovascular events including myocardial infraction (heart attack) and stroke “does not exhibit a significant increase with cannabis exposure”.
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The study was published by the journal Toxicology Reports, and is titled Cannabis and Adverse Cardiovascular Events: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Observational Studies.
For the study “a systematic search for publications describing the adverse CV events of cannabis use, including acute myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke, was performed via PubMed, Scopus, and Cochrane Library databases.” Data on effect estimates in individual studies “were extracted and combined via random-effects meta-analysis using the DerSimonian and Laird method, a generic inverse-variance strategy.”
Twenty studies with a total of 183,410,651 patients were included, 23.7% being male with a median age of 42.4 years old. The prevalence of cannabis use was around 2%.
“Cannabis use was not significantly associated with acute MI, stroke, and adverse CV events”, states the study’s authors.
The study concludes:
The risk of adverse CV events including acute MI and stroke does not exhibit a significant increase with cannabis exposure. However, caution should be exercised when interpreting the findings due to the heterogeneity of the studies.
You can find the full text of this study by clicking here.
