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By Nancy Lapid, Health Science Editor

Hello Health Rounds readers! Today we feature two studies that point to potential links to future health problems – one that suggested an increased cardiovascular risk from cannabis use, and another that found a higher prevalence of behavioral problems in children exposed to general anesthesia in the womb. We also cover a potentially exciting discovery regarding the development of prostate cancer tumors.     

In breaking news, see these stories from our Reuters journalists: 

US FDA chief very concerned about fake weight loss drugs; US Senate Republicans block bill assuring right to IVF; US CDC recommends older Americans should get another COVID shot this spring; Missouri accuses Planned Parenthood of ‘trafficking’ minors to get abortions.

And: FDA finds problems at animal lab run by Musk’s brain implant company; Thailand to ban recreational cannabis use by year-end; most South Korea trainee doctors defying pressure to end walkout; healthcare providers hit by frozen payments in ransomware outage; and Canada’s prescription drugs plan likely won’t impact budget.

Regular cannabis use was linked to higher rates of heart disease and stroke in an observational study. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

Smoking, eating or vaping cannabis products may increase the risk of serious cardiovascular events, a large observational study suggests.

Researchers who surveyed 430,000 U.S. adults, ages 18 to 74, found cannabis users had significantly higher odds of having had a heart attack or stroke, even after taking people’s tobacco use and other cardiovascular risk factors, such as diabetes and obesity, into account.

Daily cannabis users had 25% higher odds of a heart attack and 42% higher odds of a stroke compared to non-users, the study found.

Risks were lower but still present in less frequent users.

“Patients and policymakers need to be informed of these potential risks, especially given the declining perception of risk associated with cannabis use,” the researchers said.

Most users in the study smoked cannabis, but the link with heart problems was evident whether marijuana products were  smoked, eaten, or vaped, the researchers reported on Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Among younger adults at risk for premature cardiovascular disease, cannabis users had 36% higher odds of coronary heart disease, heart attack or stroke, regardless of whether they also used traditional tobacco products.

Even cannabis users who had never smoked tobacco or used e-cigarettes had a higher risk for coronary heart disease, heart attack or stroke if they used cannabis.   

The study does not prove that cannabis use was responsible for participants cardiovascular issues. The researchers only had information from a single point in time, and they had to depend on patients to accurately answer survey questions.

Exposure to general anesthesia in the womb may increase a child’s risk of behavioral disorders, a new study suggests.

Through age 3, children exposed to anesthesia due to maternal surgery during pregnancy were significantly more likely to receive a diagnosis of a host of behavioral disorders, the researchers reported. These include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, developmental speech or language disorders and autism.

In utero exposure to general anesthesia was associated with a 31% increased risk for one of these diagnoses, with higher risk when the exposure occurred in the second or third trimester of pregnancy, they reported on Wednesday in the British Journal of Anesthesia.

The findings were drawn from nearly 17 million babies born between 1999 and 2013, including 34,271 children who were exposed to general anesthesia when their mother needed to have her appendix or gallbladder removed during pregnancy.

“This study provides compelling evidence that prenatal exposure to surgery and general anesthesia may have adverse effects on children’s neurobehavioral development,” said study leader Dr. Guohua Li of the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York.

“Our findings could help inform preoperative risk assessment in pregnant women, especially when the surgical procedure is elective or when (alternative) treatment is available.”

Prostate cancer is not a single disease, researchers say, a discovery that may eventually help identify treatment strategies.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) helped them realize that prostate tumors evolve along multiple pathways, eventually converging into two distinct disease types, or “evotypes,” they reported on Thursday in Cell Genomics.

Studying DNA changes in thousands of prostate cancer samples, the researchers were able to generate an evolutionary tree showing how the two evotypes develop.

“This understanding is pivotal as it allows us to classify tumors based on their evolutionary trajectory rather than solely on individual gene mutations or expression patterns,” study leader Professor David Wedge of Manchester Cancer Research Centre in the UK said in a statement.

Classification by evotype could have epidemiological implications, his team said.

For instance, non-white patients have a higher incidence of a specific evotype. Also, cancers arising in younger patients appear to develop via a similar evolutionary progression as one of the evotypes.

It may someday be possible to tailor treatment strategies to each evotype, the researchers said.

In particular, cancers with aberrations found more commonly in one of the evotypes have been shown to be susceptible to ionizing radiation treatment and respond better to certain drugs and hormone therapies.

“We hope that the findings will not only save lives through better diagnosis and tailored treatments in the future, but they may help researchers working in other cancer fields better understand other types of cancer too,” researcher Colin Cooper, from University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School, said in a statement.

This newsletter was edited by Bill Berkrot.

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