Heavy marijuana use may increase a person's risk of a heart attack or stroke, US government researchers say; activists disagree with the findings.
Heavy marijuana use can boost blood levels of a particular protein, perhaps raising a person's risk of a heart attack or stroke, US government researchers say.
Dr Jean Lud Cadet of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, said the findings point to another example of long-term harm from marijuana. But marijuana activists expressed doubt about the findings.
Cadet said a lot of previous research has focused on the effects of marijuana on the brain.
His team looked elsewhere in the body, measuring blood protein levels in 18 long-term, heavy marijuana users and 24 other people who did not use the drug.
Levels of a protein called apolipoprotein C-III were found to be 30 percent higher in the marijuana users compared to the others. This protein is involved in the body's metabolism of triglycerides — a type of fat found in the blood — and higher levels cause increased levels of triglycerides, Cadet added.
High levels of triglycerides can contribute to hardening of the arteries or thickening of the artery walls, raising the risk of stroke, heart attack and heart disease.
The study did not look at whether the heavy marijuana users actually had heart disease.
For the full story click here.A U.S. group supporting legal sales and regulation of marijuana disputed the findings. Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Bruce Mirken said, for example, the study involved people who were extremely heavy users.
"I think the low end was 78 joints a week. That's 10 or 11 joints a day," Mirken said in a telephone interview.
"We're talking about people who are stoned all the time. We're talking about the marijuana equivalent of the guy in the alley clutching a bottle of cheap wine.
If you do anything to that level of excess, it might well have some untoward effects, whether it's marijuana or wine or broccoli," Mirken added.
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