Global Courant 2023-04-12 02:29:29
Several chemicals used in flavored e-cigarettes have been suspected for years to cause these severe and irreversible lung damage in people who vape, and new research suggests that one “vape juice” flavor is particularly harmful.
Adding mint flavor to e-cigarette liquids produces more vapor particles and is associated with poorer lung function in those who smoke, University of Pittsburgh researchers reported in one study published in the medical journal Respiratory Research on April 10.
“Many people, especially young people, mistakenly assume that vaping is safe, but even nicotine-free vape blends contain many compounds that can potentially harm the lungs,” said Kambez H. Benam, senior author and associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, in a press release. “Just because something is safe to consume as food doesn’t mean it’s safe to inhale.”
Using a biologically inspired robotic system that mimics how a human inhales from a vape pen or e-cigarette, Benam and his team showed that commercially available e-cigarette liquids containing menthol generate a higher number of toxic microparticles compared to menthol-free juice.
The team also analyzed patient records from a cohort of e-cigarette smokers that showed that menthol vapers had shallower breathing and poorer lung function compared to non-menthol smokers, regardless of age, gender, race, years of smoking and whether they used nicotine or cannabis. -containing vapor products.
Menthol is a flavor additive with a minty taste and aroma that, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, reduces the irritation and harshness of smoking, making smoking more attractive to adolescents and young adults. Menthol also interacts with nicotine in the brain to enhance the addictive effects of nicotine, making it more difficult for people who smoke menthol cigarettes to quit smoking. For these reasons, the US FDA has begun to put pressure on the tobacco industry stop using menthol in products such as cigarettes and cigars.
However, according to Benam and his co-authors, the vaping market is growing too fast for regulators to keep up.
This is partly because traditional toxicity testing using animals or living cells grown in a petri dish can take months to produce high-quality, clinically relevant data. According to the study, testing the safety of aerosol products — known as vape pens or e-cigarettes — is even more complicated because testing is usually done with mice and rats, despite their respiratory anatomy being so different from those from U.S.
The vape robot that Benam and his team have developed mimics the temperature, humidity, volume and duration of a human smoker’s puff. It can also simulate the patterns of healthy and diseased breathing and can reliably predict lung toxicity associated with e-cigarettes.
The team hopes the research will show how their device can improve preclinical studies looking at how vaporizing liquids and additives combine to create different health effects. But mostly they hope it shows that e-cigarettes may not be the harmless alternative to cigarettes as clever marketing portrays them.
“The main message we want to get out is to people, especially young adults, who have not smoked before,” said Benam. “Switching to e-cigarettes may be a better, safer alternative for someone trying to quit smoking regular tobacco products. But it’s important to have a full understanding of the risks and benefits of e-cigarettes before trying them.”
A GROWING BODY OF RESEARCH
There are flavored vaping products on the market inCanada since at least 2004 and in the U.S since the late 1990s, and a growing body of research is shedding light on the specific ways in which the chemicals they contain damage the lungs.
A study published in May 2022 by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital was the first to microscopically examine the lung tissue of a small number of e-cigarette users for chronic disease. Found that research fibrosis and damage in the small airways, similar to the chemical inhalation damage typically seen in soldiers returning from overseas conflict who had inhaled mustard gas or similar types of noxious gases.
“We also found that when patients stopped vaping, they had partial reversal of the condition over one to four years, although not completely due to residual scarring in the lung tissue,” Dr. Lida Hariri, lead author and research physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a press release.
That study was published May 13 in the medical journal NEJM Evidence, and it is one of many on in recent years sound the alarm about the harmful effects of vaping on lung tissue, blood vessels And the brain.