E-cigarettes raise risks of lung disease – Study

E - cigarette use significantly increases the risk
of developing chronic lung diseases like
asthma , bronchitis , emphysema and chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease, according to a
long term study published Monday that also
found vaping was less harmful than smoking.
The results of the research , published in the
American Journal of Preventive Medicine , are
unrelated to the recent outbreak of an acute
lung disease that has killed more than 50
people and has been linked to a substance
commonly added to vaping products containing
THC , the psychoactive component of cannabis .
Scientists at UC San Francisco examined
publicly available data that tracked e - cigarette
and tobacco habits as well as new lung disease
diagnoses in over 32 , 000 American adults from
2013 to 2016 .

They found that current and former e - cigarette
users were 1 . 3 times more likely to develop
chronic lung disease, while tobacco smokers
increased their risk by a factor of 2 . 6 .
For people who both smoked and vaped , the
risks of developing lung disease more than
tripled.
“ What we found is that for e - cigarette users ,
the odds of developing lung disease increased
by about a third , even after controlling for their
tobacco use and their clinical and demographic
information , ” said senior author Stanton
Glantz , a UCSF professor of medicine .
“ We concluded that e - cigarettes are harmful on
their own , and the effects are independent of
smoking conventional tobacco , ” he added .
The paper did not offer a new biological
explanation for how vaping causes such harm ,
but cited earlier physiological studies in both
animals and humans that have found that e -
cigarettes suppress the immune system and
increase the levels of stress- related proteins in
the lung.

– Dual users –
There have been several earlier population
studies that found an association between e -
cigarette use and lung disease at a single point
in time , but it was impossible to determine
whether the illnesses were caused by e -
cigarettes or if people with lung disease were
more likely to vape .
The authors of the new study wrote that by
starting with people who had no prior history
of lung disease and then taking account of their
use of e - cigarettes and smoking , they could
identify a stronger causal link.
Vaping advocates contend that e - cigarettes offer
people addicted to smoking a less harmful
alternative, but according to Gantz , most of the
participants in the nationally representative
sample both smoked and vaped .

“ Switching from conventional cigarettes to e -
cigarettes exclusively could reduce the risk of
lung disease, but very few people do it , ” he
said . “ For most smokers , they simply add e -
cigarettes and become dual users , significantly
increasing their risk of developing lung disease
above just smoking . ”