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Cannabis Use Found to Increase the Risk of Adverse Cardiovascular Events

  • Writer: FibonacciMD
    FibonacciMD
  • May 6
  • 2 min read

Updated: May 6

cannabis, cardiovascular

A study released in March 2025, in pre-publication (not yet peer-reviewed), looked at 93,267 adult subjects under the age of 50 with a diagnosis of cannabis use compared to 4,543,361 subjects with no cannabis use diagnoses.  ICD-10 (International classification of diseases, 10th version) diagnoses were used to separate cannabis users from non-users as well as the incidence of myocardial infarction, major adverse cardiovascular events, mortality, heart failure and ischemic stroke in the subjects.  The study was a retrospective review of data from U.S. patients in a large database.  


After propensity matching the groups to assure equal baseline health characteristics there were then 89,776 subjects in each group for the actual study.  Both groups were free of some known risk factors including hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipemia and heart disease and tobacco use. 


Over a 5-year period of data review, there was a 6.2 times higher risk of myocardial infarction, a 4.3 times higher risk of stroke, a 3.3 times higher risk of a major adverse cardiovascular event, a 2 times higher risk of heart failure and a 1.5 times higher risk of death in the cannabis users group compared to the non-users. 


Even though there was a major increase in risk, the absolute numbers were small.  There was a 0.558% incidence of myocardial infarction in cannabis-users vs. 0.09% in non-users.  For stroke there was 0.405% incidence in cannabis-users vs. 0.094% in non-users. For heart failure a 0.861% incidence in cannabis users vs. 0.424% incidence in non-users. All-cause mortality was 1.262% in cannabis users vs. 0.841% in non-users.


Limitations of the study include the use of retrospective diagnoses of cannabis use and adverse events which may not be correct and there may have been confounding variables not taken into account which could have affected results. 


Comments: 

This study found a significant increase in risk in cannabis using subjects under 50 years of age compared to non-users, for a number of adverse cardiovascular events including myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, heart failure, and mortality.  Although the risk of an adverse event was much higher in the cannabis group, this affected only a small percentage of total users, as the actual percentages of adverse events were small. 


This is consistent with a number of other studies on cannabis use that have shown it can cause increased cardiovascular risk.  In one study, the risk of having a myocardial infarction after smoking cannabis was almost 5 times higher in the first hour after use, compared to controls.  Cannabis is thought to increase cardiovascular risk due to its effects of increasing heart rate, blood pressure, and arterial wall inflammation which can increase cardiovascular stress and also lead to worsening atherosclerosis.






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