Booze, weed and cocaine can lead to heart attacks and strokes
“This should be a call to arms to improve our efforts to curb drug and alcohol misuse and to educate and support people to take care of themselves and avoid long-term cardiac issues.”
Binge drinking, smoking weed and snorting cocaine can lead to a heart attack or a stroke, new research warns.
Drug use especially has a vastly higher risk of developing atrial fibrillation, a quivering or irregular rhythm, that can lead to heart disease, scientists said.
But researchers are able to track people who were hospitalized for drinking too much, especially around Christmas party season or big sporting events, and later seek treatment for atrial fibrillation - a heart condition that causes an irregular and often abnormally fast heart rate.
Atrial fibrillation is the most common heart rhythm disturbance, affecting around 1.4 million people in the UK.
It can affect adults of any age, but it's more common in older people.
In two studies, research data was studied of millions of adult inpatient hospitalizations and emergency department visits from over a decade.
The first only studied illegal drugs and found the increased risk of being diagnosed with atrial fibrillation.
Meth increased risk by 86 percent, cocaine by 61 percent, opiate users by 74 percent and cannabis by 35 percent.
The cumulative likelihood of people experiencing atrial fibrillation for the first time increased gradually over time with each of the four substances, according to the researchers.
Dr. Anthony Lin, resident physician at the University of California, San Francisco, said: “Our findings indicate there is still a lot to understand about cardiac arrhythmia and the associated risks with many substances.
“Since the substances analyzed in this study ranged from stimulants to depressants, it was surprising that we were able to observe an increased association of new-onset atrial fibrillation with all four substances.
"Given the strong associations we observed in this large and diverse administrative database, future research should be directed at understanding the physiologic implications of these stimulants and depressants on the heart and strengthening efforts within the health care system to reduce substance abuse disorder.”
He added: "The population-level associations observed in the study are intriguing and warrant further exploration into the arrhythmia-related complications of substances commonly used today."
The second study found a session of binge drinking was linked with a higher risk of an immediate, individual atrial fibrillation shortly after the event.
Researchers reviewed data from breathalyzer devices plus records for all emergency department visits following events when people were most likely to binge drink, like Super Bowl Sunday.
The investigators described this as an “instrumental variable analysis,” which is a way to infer causal associations from observational data.
This enabled the first evaluation of near-term relationships between alcohol use and atrial fibrillation in the general population—in this case, the entire state of California.
Sidney Aung, a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco, said: “While we know that alcohol consumption over many years can increase the risk of an ultimate diagnosis of atrial fibrillation, we found evidence that acute alcohol consumption substantially heightens the risk of an emergency department visit for atrial fibrillation in the general population.
“The study also provided the first objective evidence that acute alcohol consumption increases the risk for a first atrial fibrillation event.”
Dr. Rakesh Gopinathannair, chair of the American Heart Association’s Electrocardiography and Arrhythmias Committee, warned boozing a lot can affect cardiac rhythm.
He said: “Both studies are a stark reminder that a higher level of alcohol consumption, as well as any type of illicit drug use, can result in cardiac rhythm disturbances.
“This is welcome data on the harmful impact of heavy alcohol use and any kind of recreational drug use, either methamphetamine, cocaine, cannabis or opiates.”
“Even though there are limitations – you cannot infer causality – these studies highlight the public health issue that alcohol and drug misuse present: a substantial number of people are using them and ending up in the ER with serious cardiac events.
“This should be a call to arms to improve our efforts to curb drug and alcohol misuse and to educate and support people to take care of themselves and avoid long-term cardiac issues.”
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