Medical cannabis was approved in January 2018 on a trial basis in Denmark.
One study relates that cannabis prescribed for him chronic pain is associated with a high risk of heart rhythm disordersaccording to an investigation by Hospital Universitario de Gentofte (Denmark), presented at the ESC Congress 2022of the European Society of Cardiology, which is held in Barcelona.
The study’s author, cardiologist Nina Nouhraveshof Hospital Universitario de Gentofte (Denmark), recalls that “the chronic pain it’s a growing problem. According to the Danish health authorities, the 29 percent of adults Danes over the age of 16 reported chronic pain in 2017in front of 19 percent in 2000. Medical cannabis was approved in January 2018 on a trial basis in Denmark, meaning doctors can prescribe it for chronic pain if all other measures, including opioids, have proven insufficient. Safety data is scant, so this study investigated the cardiovascular side effects del cannabis medicinaland the arrhythmias in particular, as heart rhythm disorders have previously been found in recreational cannabis users,” he adds.
The researchers identified a total of 1.6 million patients diagnosed with chronic pain in Denmark between 2018 and 2021. Of these, 4,931 patients (0.31 percent) claimed at least one cannabis prescription (dronabinol 29 percent, cannabinoids 46 percent, cannabidiol 25 percent). Each user was matched for age, gender, and pain diagnosis with five non-users with chronic pain who acted as controls. Users and controls were followed for 180 days and their risks of developing new cardiovascular diseases were compared.
The average age of the participants was 60 years and 63 percent were women. The study reports, for the first time, the chronic pain conditions of medical cannabis users in Denmark. 17.8 percent had cancer, 17.1 percent arthritis, 14.9 percent back pain, 9.8 percent neurological disease, 4.4 percent headache, 3.0 percent percent complicated fractures and 33.1 percent other diagnoses.
Arrhythmia more likely to appear in cannabis users
The absolute risk of arrhythmia of new appearance was 0.86 percent in medical cannabis users in front of 0.49 percent in non-consumers, which represents a relative risk of 1.74. The risks of new-onset acute coronary syndrome and heart failure did not differ between the two groups. The results were similar for each chronic pain condition and each type of medical cannabis.
Nouhravesh points out that his study found that los medical cannabis users “had a 74 percent increased risk of have heart rhythm disorders in comparison with the non-consumers; however, the absolute risk difference was modest. It must be taken into account that a higher proportion of those in the cannabis group were taking other pain medications, specifically nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), opiates, and antiepileptics, and we cannot rule out that this may explain the increased likelihood of arrhythmias.”
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