'Something else going on' in pot connection

You've likely seen similar news before. Click here for the most recent.  And while the research leaves many unanswered questions, it's worth considering how pot use is tied to higher odds for stroke:

New research analyzing millions of U.S. medical records suggests that marijuana use raises an adult's risk of stroke and heart failure.

The study couldn't prove cause-and-effect, but the researchers said they tried to account for other heart risk factors.

"Even when we corrected for known risk factors, we still found a higher rate of both stroke and heart failure in these patients," explained lead researcher Dr. Aditi Kalla, a cardiologist at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.

"That leads us to believe that there is something else going on besides just obesity or diet-related cardiovascular side effects," Kalla said in a news release from the American College of Cardiology (ACC).

Pot: Stroke related? Researchers seeking answers

For the complex human brain, there are few simple answers out there. This includes answers about stroke causes and risks, depending on type of stroke, age and other factors.

Now, there's more research on marijuana use, specific type of stroke and age:

Photo from National Library of Medicine

A team led by Dr. Valerie Wolff, at the University Hospital of Strasbourg in France, examined 334 patients younger than 45 who suffered an ischemic stroke -- an attack caused by blocked blood flow to the brain. Fifty-eight of the patients were marijuana users.

The study couldn't prove that marijuana caused strokes, but Wolff's team did find some differences in stroke characteristics between pot users and non-users.

Pot and stroke research and rats

This blog has seen postings about various research on preventing or treating strokes. I always try not to make rash promises about how something - coffee or chocolate or tea or bat spit (honest!) or snake venom - will prevent a stroke or treat a stroke.

So I was fascinated to read the many articles about how "stroke survivors" could be given cannabis to reduce brain damage:

The “exciting” research has been compiled by researchers at the University of Nottingham, who have pulled together research from around the world to suggest that ‘cannabinoids’ – chemicals related to those found in cannabis, some of which also occur naturally in the body – could reduce the size of stroke and improve neurological function.

The research – so far which has only been done on rats – indicates that all three classes of cannabinoid could be effective in shrinking the area of the brain affected by stroke and in recovering neurological function.

I put "stroke survivors" in quotes because of the second paragraph's note that the research was done on rats - not people. So the "stroke survivors" so far have been rats.

Always watch out for stories that call research "exciting" when it's done on rats. Would cannabinoids work the same on humans? Nobody knows. Keep that in mind when you read about the weed. It'll be time to be excited when it works on people.

(Photo from the National Institutes of Health)