AVA Synopsis:
The authors identified nine vape shop customers that were young adults and had never smoked, whom were invited to a “free medical check-up at the Centro per la Pevenzione e Cura del Tagismo of the University of Catania. The authors used 12 non e-cigarette users that were hospital staff and represented the control group.
The authors examined various health outcomes including – blood pressure, heart rate, body weight, lung function, respiratory symptoms, exhaled breath nitric oxide (eNO), exhaled carbon monoxide (eCO), and high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) of the lungs. The authors studied participants for approximately 3.5 years.
The authors found no changes in the examined health markers among e-cigarette users, noting that even “the heaviest [e-cigarette] users failed to exhibit any evidence of emerging lung injury as reflected in these physiologic, clinical or inflammatory measure.” Further, the authors found no detectable changes in blood pressure and/or the heart rates of the e-cigarette users.
The authors conclude that their findings present “preliminary evidence that long-term use of [e-cigarettes] is unlikely to raise significant health concerns in relatively young users.”
Implications:
Although e-cigarettes are recommended for combustible cigarette users as a harm reduction tool, this study presents evidence that finds use of e-cigarettes by never smokers to have very little to no adverse health effects. Further, it provides further evidence that e-cigarettes are significantly less harmful than combustible cigarettes and their use should be encouraged by adults that cannot quit smoking using traditional quit-smoking methods.
Abstract:
Although electronic cigarettes (ECs) are a much less harmful alternative to tobacco cigarettes, there is concern as to whether long-term ECs use may cause risks to human health. We report health outcomes (blood pressure, heart rate, body weight, lung function, respiratory symptoms, exhaled breath nitric oxide [eNO], exhaled carbon monoxide [eCO], and high-resolution computed tomography [HRCT] of the lungs) from a prospective 3.5-year observational study of a cohort of nine daily EC users (mean age 29.7 (±6.1) years) who have never smoked and a reference group of twelve never smokers. No significant changes could be detected over the observation period from baseline in the EC users or between EC users and control subjects in any of the health outcomes investigated. Moreover, no pathological findings could be identified on HRCT of the lungs and no respiratory symptoms were consistently reported in the EC user group. Although it cannot be excluded that some harm may occur at later stages, this study did not demonstrate any health concerns associated with long-term use of EC in relatively young users who did not also smoke tobacco.
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