A new study has confirmed that smoking e-cigarettes can have detrimental effects on health.
On Monday, researchers published the first longitudinal study of the effects of vaping in theAmerican Journal of Preventive Medicine,and findings showed that continuous use of e-cigarettes increases one’s risk of developing chronic respiratory disease.
The study examined data from around 32,000 adults in the United States over a three-year period between 2013 and 2016, according toNBC.
“I was a little surprised that we could find evidence on incident lung disease in the longitudinal study, because three years is a while but most studies that look at the development of lung disease go over 10 to 20 years,” Stanton Glantz, an author of the study and director of University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, toldCNN.
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“It’s the first longitudinal study in the general population to link e-cigs with chronic lung disease,” Glantz added. “My guess is that if we were to come back and do this study in another five years, we would probably find bigger effects.”
The data also showed that combustible cigarette smokers were more likely to develop a respiratory disease than e-cigarette users.
However, the study found that adults who vaped often smoked both e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes, further increasing their risk of lung disease. In fact, the risk more than tripled, NBC reported.
Separate from this study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administrationhave been investigating cases of EVALI, which stands for e-cigarette or vaping associated lung injury. Since cases have first began to proliferate earlier this year, they have yet to pin down the root cause due to the variety of vaping products available.
A majority of vaping-related lung illnesses are coming from THC-containing products,the CDC said in a September report.
As of Dec. 4,the CDC reported2,291 cases of hospitalized EVALI across the U.S., and 48 deaths from the illness have been confirmed.
source: people.com
