- Vaping: The mysterious epidemic caused by electronic cigarettes
The use of electronic cigarettes significantly increases a person's risk of developing chronic lung diseases such as asthma , bronchitis , emphysema or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease , according to new research from the University of California, the first longitudinal study linking electronic cigarettes with diseases in a representative sample of the entire American adult population.
The study also found that people who used electronic cigarettes and at the same time smoked tobacco, by far the most common pattern among adult users of electronic cigarettes, had an even greater risk of developing chronic lung disease than those who used only one of the two products.
The findings, which are published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine , are based on an analysis of publicly available data in the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH), which tracked the consumption habits of electronic cigarettes and tobacco, as well. as new diagnoses of lung disease in more than 32,000 American adults from 2013 to 2016.
Although several previous population studies had found an association between the use of electronic cigarettes and lung disease, a cause-effect relationship between the two factors could not be established.
However, this new longitudinal study - which has started from the analysis of people without lung problems and has followed them for three years - can offer more robust evidence of a causal link between the use of electronic cigarettes in adults and lung diseases .
"What we found is that for users of electronic cigarettes, the chances of developing lung disease increased by about a third, even after controlling their tobacco use and their clinical and demographic information," says lead author Stanton Glantz, professor of the UCSF of medicine and director of the Center for Research and Education for Tobacco Control of the UCSF.
"We conclude that electronic cigarettes are harmful by themselves , and the effects are independent of smoking conventional tobacco," Glantz adds.
Although users of electronic cigarettes were 1.3 times more likely to develop chronic lung disease, tobacco smokers increased their risk by a factor of 2.6. For dual users, people who smoke and use electronic cigarettes at the same time, these two risks multiply.
"Dual users, the most common use pattern among people who use electronic cigarettes, have the combined risk of electronic cigarettes and conventional cigarettes, so they are actually worse than tobacco smokers," Glantz warns.
This finding is particularly relevant as the debate continues on whether electronic cigarettes should be promoted as a harm reduction tool for smokers.
While the authors discovered that the change from smoked tobacco to electronic cigarettes reduced the risk of developing lung disease, less than 1% of smokers had completely switched to electronic cigarettes.
"Switching from conventional cigarettes to electronic cigarettes exclusively could reduce the risk of lung disease, but very few people do," says Glantz. "For most smokers, they simply add electronic cigarettes and become dual users, which increases significantly your risk of developing lung disease over those who only smoke tobacco. "
It is important to note that the results reported in this study are not related to EVALI (Pulmonary injury associated with the use of electronic cigarettes or vaping, for its acronym in English), the acute lung disease that was first reported last summer, whose cases Graves sent several users of electronic cigarettes to the hospital and others to premature death.
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