Reuters reports that marijuana use may be associated with hypertension.
The study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, was a retrospective follow-up study of 1,213 people aged 20 or above who had been involved in a large and ongoing National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. In 2005–2006, they were asked if they had ever used marijuana.
For Yankey’s study, information on marijuana use was merged with mortality data in 2011 from the US National Center for Health Statistics, and adjusted for confounding factors such as tobacco smoking and variables including sex, age and ethnicity.
The average duration of use among users of marijuana, or cannabis, was 11.5 years.
The results showed marijuana users had a 3.42-times higher risk of death from hypertension than non-users, and a 1.04 greater risk for each year of use.
There was no link between marijuana use and dying from heart or cerebrovascular diseases such as strokes.
Read the rest at www.reuters.com
