Baby boy is first marijuana overdose death, doctors claim

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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...verdose-death-doctors-claim-article-1.3637939

Two Colorado doctors claim they have documented the first case of a person dying from consuming too much marijuana.

Drs. Thomas Nappe and Christopher Hoyte shared their findings in the journal, "Clinical Practice and Cases in Emergency Medicine."

Nappe and Hoyte wrote in their study that the first person to die from a marijuana overdose was an 11-month-old boy.

The child, who died in 2015, was rushed to the emergency room after having a seizure. The boy's guardian told doctors that the child had been retching, was "irritable" and lethargic in the days leading up to his hospitalization.

A team of doctors, which included Hoyte and Nappe, examined the boy for medical conditions but found he was otherwise healthy, KUSA reports.

The child soon became unresponsive in the hospital and was given a breathing tube as his condition worsened.

The doctors said the boy's heart stopped and, despite efforts to resuscitate, the child died.

Following the death, doctors found the child's blood and urine contained tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, they wrote in the journal.

Hoyte and Nappe also discovered that the child had myocarditis, which causes the heart muscles to become inflamed and stop working.

The doctors, who noted that myocarditis is rare in children, said they tried to find causes that contributed to the boy's heart issues, but they couldn't find anything.

They believe the child consumed a lot of cannabis very quickly and the marijuana overdose caused the myocarditis, which ultimately killed him.

"The only thing that we found was marijuana. High concentrations of marijuana in his blood. And that's the only thing we found," Hoyte told KUSA. "The kid never really got better. And just one thing led to another and the kid ended up with a heart stopped. And the kid stopped breathing and died."

Hoyte and Nappe said a review of the child's history found "an unstable motel-living situation" and his parents allegedly confessing to using drugs, including marijuana.

"In the age of legalized marijuana, children are at increased risk of exposure, mainly through ingestion of food products, or 'edibles,' " Hoyte said. "I feel very comfortable with the workup that we did and how much we ruled out in this particular case."

It was not revealed if anyone was prosecuted related to the child's death.

 

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The truth behind the ‘first marijuana overdose death’

A case report about the seizure and death of an 11-month old after exposure to cannabis has prompted headlines about “the first marijuana overdose death” this week.

Except that’s not what the doctors meant.

“We are absolutely not saying that marijuana killed that child,” said Thomas Nappe, an author of the report who is now the director of medical toxicology at St. Luke’s University Health Network in Bethlehem, Pa.

Nappe, who co-authored the report with Christopher Hoyte, explained that the doctors simply observed this unusual sequence of events, documented it and alerted the medical community that it is worth studying a possible relationship between cannabis and the child’s cause of death, myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle.

Their observations appeared in the August edition of the journal Clinical Practice and Cases in Emergency Medicine as a case report, which is significantly different from a scientific study or research report that can be used to establish a causal relationship.

A spokesman for Denver Health wrote in an email that Hoyte would not be available for an interview late Thursday.

The report states that the child experienced an “unstable motel-living situation” and the parents admitted to drug possessions, including cannabis. Nappe said the authors urge parents to be vigilant and keep cannabis out of reach of children.

The report recommends: “In states where cannabis is legalized, it is important that physicians not only counsel parents on preventing exposure to cannabis, but to also consider cannabis toxicity in unexplained pediatric myocarditis and cardiac deaths as a basis for urine drug screening in this setting.”

The authors added that,” As of this writing, this is the first reported pediatric death associated with cannabis exposure.”

Nappe emphasized that the word “associated” should not be interpreted as indicating a cause and effect.

Drug policy and health experts also warned against making too much of the report.

“You just can’t make those statements because then what happens is lay people say, ‘Oh my God, did you hear a kid died from marijuana poisoning?’ and it can be sensationalized,” said Noah Kaufman, a Northern Colorado emergency room physician.

“It’s not based on reality. It’s based on somebody kind of jumping the gun and making a conclusion, and scientifically you can’t do that.”

Turns out, that’s what happened in previous news reports, much to Nappe’s dismay. Upon hearing that Nappe and Hoyte were not claiming that the child died from marijuana, Kaufman said “that’s more responsible.”

Jonathan Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, said that it doesn’t strike him as impossible that the death described in the report could be linked to marijuana.

“Unambiguously, cannabis can accelerate the heart,” said Caulkins, who is not a medical doctor but studies drug policy and markets. He also agreed that parents should keep marijuana out of reach of their children.

Millions of Americans use marijuana regularly, according to the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health, and addiction treatment researcher Keith Humphreys said cannabis consumption has “virtually no risk.”

The Drug Enforcement Administration states that there have been no reported overdose deaths from marijuana.

Even if after further studies it turns out that this child’s death was caused by a marijuana overdose, it would be “a very unusual event,” said Humphreys, a Stanford University psychiatry professor who served as a senior policy adviser at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy during the Obama administration.

“It would not be correct to go from this to a generalized panic about the lethality of cannabis. It’s just not there,” Humphreys said.

“This is not an omen of a disaster to come.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...th-behind-the-first-marijuana-overdose-death/

 

[S.J.B.]

Cannabis is well-known to accelerate heart rate and it is not unheard of for it to have been consumed prior to fatal heart attacks. Whether that counts as a "cannabis overdose" or not is more a semantic argument than anything.