A product that was introduced as a safer alternative to smoking is causing lung and cardiovascular damage in young adults, according to new University of Alberta research published today.
"The assumption is that these devices are less harmful than traditional cigarettes, but there is a lack of data on cardiopulmonary consequences of e-cigarette use," says principal investigator Mike Stickland, professor of pulmonary medicine and director of the G.F. MacDonald Centre for Lung Health.
"Our findings suggest early cardiopulmonary impairment and pulmonary vascular dysfunction in young e-cigarette users that could lead to more serious complications with continued exposure."
The team studied 20 young e-cigarette users and compared them with 20 young people of similar age, height and sex as a control group. The e-cigarette users had been vaping for an average of 3.4 years and had never smoked traditional tobacco cigarettes or marijuana.
Study participants were put through a series of stress tests for the heart and lungs, looking to detect changes that might not show up on usual tests. They did an exercise bike test with increasing levels of resistance, as well as lung diffusion capacity tests to examine blood flow in the lungs.
Stickland says he was shocked by the results.
"The e-cigarette users had normal lung function with standard clinical tests, but they got out of breath at a much lower exercise intensity than the controls," he says. "Twenty-three-year-olds should not be out of breath at an exercise intensity equivalent to a moderate walk."
"We initially collected data on just a few e-cigarette users, as we were doing similar work examining pulmonary blood flow in elderly patients with smoking-induced lung damage," explains Thomas Williams, the graduate student who was first author on the study. "We wondered if we'd see early signs in e-cigarette users, but we were not expecting results as compelling as what we saw. These findings were striking, and it was immediately clear to the team that this was a project which we needed to pursue."
The research team also saw lower breathing efficiency and marked impairment in blood flow to the lungs in the e-cigarette group. All these findings point to early pulmonary impairment in young e-cigarette users, Stickland says.
E-cigarette use among youth and young adults in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom is now more prevalent than conventional tobacco smoking, up 25 per cent since 2017, the researchers report. U.K. lawmakers recently tabled a bill aimed at banning smoking and vaping for life for anyone born after Jan. 1, 2009.
