A new study, published Monday in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, has found that using e-cigarettes significantly increases your risk of developing chronic lung disease.
Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, found that people who use e-cigarettes are more likely to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPDs), such as asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema.
Senior study author Dr. Stanton Glantz said, “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.”
Dr. Glantz is a professor of medicine and director of the UC San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.
The study also looked at people who used e-cigarettes as well as conventional cigarettes and tracked their lung disease diagnosis from 2013 to 2016.
The researchers found that those who used both e-cigarettes and convention cigarettes were even more likely to receive COPD diagnosis than those who used either e-cigs or conventional cigarettes.
Dr. Glantz noted, “Dual users – the most common pattern among people who use e-cigarettes – get the combined risk of e-cigarettes and conventional cigarettes, so they’re actually worse off than tobacco smokers.”
The study did not consider the EVALI (e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury) cases, which are currently being investigated by the CDC and FDA.
“Switching from conventional cigarettes to e-cigarettes exclusively could reduce the risk of lung disease, but very few people do it,” added Dr. Glantz. “For most smokers, they simply add e-cigarettes and become dual users, significantly increasing their risk of developing lung disease above just smoking.” Dr. Glantz and his colleagues determined that their study certainly adds to the fact that e-cigarettes have been making the tobacco and vaping epidemic worse.
