LOS ANGELES, Dec 16:
Use of e-cigarettes may significantly increase a person’s risk of developing chronic lung diseases like asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema, according to a study published on Monday.
Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco in the US also found that people who used e-cigarettes and smoked tobacco-the most common pattern among adult e-cigarette users-were at an even higher risk of developing chronic lung disease than those who used either product alone. The findings, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, are based on an analysis of publicly available data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH), which tracked e-cigarette and tobacco habits as well as new lung disease diagnoses in over 32,000 American adults from 2013 to 2016. Several earlier population studies had found an association between e-cigarette use and lung disease at a single point in time.
However, these studies provided a snapshot that made it impossible for researchers to say whether lung disease was being caused by e-cigarettes or if people with lung disease were more likely to use e-cigarettes. The researchers started with people who did not have any reported lung disease, taking account of their e-cigarette use and smoking from the start. They then followed them for three years, offering stronger evidence of a causal link between adult e-cigarette use and lung diseases than prior studies. “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 Stanton Glantz, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. (PTI)
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