Marijuana Use and Stress Cardiomyopathy in the Young

Background Increased accessibility, recreational use, and regional legalization of marijuana (cannabis) have been paralleled by widespread recognition of its serious cardiovascular complications (acute myocardial infarction, stroke, sudden death) particularly in the young. We aimed to examine trends in hospital admissions and outcomes of adults with stress cardiomyopathy (SC) in temporal relation to marijuana use. Methods and results A search of the 2003-2011 Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIIS) database identified 33,343 admissions for SC of which 210 (0.06%) were temporally related to marijuana use. Demographics, clinical characteristics, and outcomes of marijuana users (MU) and non-marijuana users (NMU) with SC were compared. MU were younger (44±14 vs. 66±13 years), more often male (36% vs. 8%), and had lower prevalence of hypertension (38% vs. 62%), diabetes (2.4% vs. 17.6%), and hyperlipidemia (16% vs. 52%) while more often suffered from depression (33% vs. 15%), psychosis (12% vs. 4%), anxiety disorder (28% vs. 16%), alcohol use disorder (13% vs. 3%), tobacco use (73% vs. 29%), and polysubstance abuse (11% vs. 0.3%) [all p<0.001]. In addition, MU more often suffered a cardiac arrest and required placement of a defibrillator while congestive heart failure was more frequent in NMU. Logistic regression analysis on the entire database (n=71,753,900), adjusted for known risk factors for SC, identified marijuana use as an independent predictor of SC (OR=1.83; 95% CI=1.57-2.12, p<0.0001). Among MU, older age (>48 years) was a strong predictor of any major adverse cardiac event (OR=7.8; 95% CI=2.88-21.13; p<0.0001). Conclusions Marijuana use is linked to SC in younger individuals and is associated with significant morbidity despite being younger in age and having a more favorable cardiac risk factor profile in affected individuals.