A mysterious syndrome that makes marijuana users violently ill is starting to worry doctors

A new study documented a sharp rise in emergency-room visits linked with marijuana following legalization in Colorado.

One of the key drivers of the ER visits was a mysterious syndrome characterized by severe nausea and repeated vomiting.

Little is known about the condition, called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS.

The only known way to cure CHS is to stop using marijuana. Researchers still aren't sure what causes it.

When she became so uncontrollably sick that she resorted to scalding her skin in a hot bath for the third time in a row, Mrs. X began to wonder whether it had something to do with smoking marijuana.

For nearly a decade, the Australian woman had experienced sudden and severe episodes of nausea and vomiting in connection with using the drug. Before that, she'd smoked safely for years, with no symptoms.

In 2004, a team of emergency-room physicians in Australia detailed her experience anonymously alongside a handful of similar cases in the same region that year. In nearly all those cases, the people described an illness that cropped up suddenly, often after decades of normal marijuana use. Piping hot baths were their only relief.

The Australian physicians dubbed it "cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome," or CHS.

Though the Australians' report raised some red flags locally, most experts continued to think that cases like Mrs. X's were rare across the globe - until a spate of similar reports cropped up elsewhere.

Now, several recent studies from ER physicians across Europe and the US are suggesting that CHS could be a lot more common than previously thought.

The latest study was published on Monday by a team of clinicians in Colorado, where marijuana was legalized medically in 2009 and recreationally in 2014. In their study, which appeared in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, the physicians described more than 2,500 cannabis-related ER visits to a large public hospital in the state from 2012 to 2016.

They found that stomach issues like nausea and vomiting were the main driver of the trips, even before psychiatric problems like intoxication and paranoia. And of those stomach issues, CHS was the most commonly reported problem and the top reason for the people to be booked at the hospital.

"To see that this was a leading reason for people coming to the ER, that was pretty striking," Andrew Monte, an associate professor of emergency medicine at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital who led the study, told Business Insider.

"We have to do a better job of educating users on the fact that this phenomenon exists," he added.

Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, echoed Monte's concerns about cannabis and CHS in an editorial published with the study.

"We must recognize that the full range of potential adverse health consequences from cannabis consumption are not fully understood," she wrote.

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