Triggering Myocardial Infarction by Marijuana

In 2001, Murray Mittleman and other researchers published the article 'Triggering Myocardial Infarction by Marijuana.' They interviewed 3,882 patients with acute myocardial infarction, on average four days after infarction onset. They used the case-crossover study design to compare the reported use of marijuana within 60 minutes preceding symptoms of myocardial infarction onset to its expected frequency using self-matched control data. The results show that in the studied population, the risk of myocardial infarction onset was elevated 4.8 times over baseline in the first hour after marijuana use, and rapidly decreased after that.

The researchers state that smoking marijuana is a rare trigger of acute myocardial infarction and may pose a health risk to patients with established coronary artery disease and perhaps to individuals with multiple coronary risk factors. It is necessary to conduct more studies on the underlying mechanism by which cannabis use may cause infarction, mainly because of the different routes of administration that are currently available, besides smoking.