The relationship of opium addiction with coronary artery disease

Abstract

Objectives: There is some controversy regarding the effect of opium addiction on the coronary artery disease (CAD). The aim of this study was to determine the association between chronic opium consumption and CAD. Methods: This study had a case-control design. The patients re-cruited to the study were selected from angiography files in De-partment of Cardiology in Kerman University of Medical Sci-ences, Kerman, Iran. The comparison was done between CAD patients and normal subjects. Opium addiction was diagnosed by patient self-report and confirmed with interview based on DSM-IV criteria. Odds ratio with 95% confidence interval were esti-mated by unconditional logistic regression. Results: The risk factor of CAD was the same in the two study groups. The significant difference in opium consumption was demonstrated between CAD patients and normal coronary artery subjects (OR=3.8, 95%CI=1.5-9.5). Because of the strong associa-tion between cigarette smoking and opium addiction, analysis was done in smoker and non-smoker groups separately. Logistic re-gression showed opium addiction was the independent risk factor for CAD in non-smokers after adjusting to other CAD risk factors (OR=38, 95%CI=2.7-531.7), but in cigarette smokers opium was not a significant risk factor (OR=13.2, 95%CI=0.85-206.5). Conclusions: We confirmed that the opium was an independent risk factor for CAD. Health managers and policy makers should try to aware general population and prepare many preventive pro-grams against substance abuse.

Keywords

• Opium; Coronary artery disease; Angiography; Risk factor