Risk of Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke Events in Methamphetamine Users: A 10-Year Follow-Up Study.

Abstract Long-term follow-up data regarding the association between methamphetamine use and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular complications are scarce. We investigated the risk of complications in methamphetamine users over a decade. A total of 1,315 inpatients treated for methamphetamine use were recruited from the Psychiatric Inpatient Medical Claims database in Taiwan between January 1, 1997, and December 31, 2000, and matched with a population proxy comparison group at a ratio of 1:4 through propensity score matching. All patients were monitored for any incident complication until December 31, 2010. Cox proportional hazards model was used to estimate the risk of ICD-9-CM cardiovascular diseases and stroke events. The patients were mostly male, and approximately half were younger than 30 years. The methamphetamine cohort had higher incidences of cardiovascular diseases and stroke events than the comparison cohort (87.5/10,000 vs 55.3/10,000 person-years, P