The World Health Organization was criticized last night for claiming vaping can lead to a seizure within hours.
The global health organization was checked by users on X, prompting the social platform to post a community note.
The note said: ‘This post is based on unclear evidence using studies that have not been peer-reviewed.
“The claim is based on approximately 120 incidents that have occurred since 2019 and the outcome of which is unclear.”
The World Health Organization published the above tweet on Monday
X’s Community Notes quickly added that the claim in WHO’s tweet had been questioned by users
Dr. Charles Gardner, a Brooklyn-based developmental neurobiologist, tweeted: ‘Please provide peer-reviewed evidence to support this claim that vaping causes seizures “typically within 24 hours.”
“If you can’t do this, please delete your tweet. NOTE: I have searched the literature and cannot find any research showing an increased risk of seizures.’
Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a drug policy reform organization, said: “I’m pretty sure this is nonsense. Why is the WHO’s position on vaping so strangely misaligned?’
Other users called the WHO clowns and liars and claimed it promoted propaganda.
The new wave of criticism comes as the organization is still trying to regain public trust after what many see as a failed WHO response to the Covid pandemic.
Early in the pandemic, wearing masks was discouraged for months, and numerous scientists have dismissed the WHO’s reluctance to acknowledge that Covid was often spread through the air and by people without symptoms.
Additionally, the WHO released a report in 2021 concluding that COVID-19 most likely jumped from animals to humans, dismissing the possibility that it originated in a laboratory, a theory supported by several government agencies.
But the organization backtracked the following year, saying “important data” was still missing and it was premature to rule out Covid being linked to a laboratory.
The community note on X included a link to an editorial about vaping and seizures.
The 2020 editorial in the Journal of Adolescent Health criticized a 2019 study that analyzed a series of 122 seizures and other neurological symptoms among people who reported vaping in the past 24 hours.
The researchers suggested that nicotine may be responsible for the seizures and symptoms because of its proconvulsant effects – meaning it could lead to convulsions.
However, the editorial said the details of the study “raise questions about a causal relationship, which should be taken into account when assessing the true health threat of nicotine vaping to youth.”
A study published this week linked vaping to health effects such as asthma, pneumonia and bronchitis. However, smoking has long been associated with serious health consequences, such as lung cancer and heart disease
It added: ‘A big question is why nicotine inhaled from e-cigarettes should cause seizures, while nicotine from conventional cigarettes does not.’
The authors said that a person would have to inhale a very large dose of nicotine to trigger an attack, but the amount of the substance in a vaping device is much less compared to that in a traditional cigarette.
Furthermore, the toxic effects of large nicotine intake would be expected to occur within minutes of inhalation and resolve within hours – and the authors said ‘it seems unlikely that attacks would occur without other manifestations of systemic toxicity.’
One shortcoming of the 2019 study, the editors said, was that it analyzed “events” of attacks that were self-reported and not always clear.
The descriptions varied, with some reporting severe episodes and others describing tremors or epilepsy-like activity.
In most cases, the events were not evaluated by medical professionals.
The authors of the editorial noted that nicotine can cause anxiety attacks and involuntary muscle contractions that some people may interpret as seizures even though they are not.
Vaping is touted as a safer alternative to cigarettes and is often used as a smoking cessation tool.
However, the devices are not without risks.
A large study earlier this year found that it can increase your risk of eight lung diseases: asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bronchitis, various forms of pneumonia and popcorn lung, or damage to the small airways of the lungs.
Smoking traditional cigarettes has long been linked to fatal conditions such as lung cancer, diabetes, heart disease and stroke – for which survival rates are much lower.
The number of traditional cigarettes smoked has fallen, while vaping has risen, especially among middle and high school students.
A 2023 CDC analysis found that 2.1 million of these children – nearly eight percent of the student population – used the devices, with 47 percent of children who had ever tried an e-cigarette currently being vaporized.
Vapes often have attractive flavors, such as cotton candy and crème brulee, and have packaging that appeals to younger users.
This has gotten millions of young people hooked, and data shows that about 90 percent of them have reported using a fruit- or candy-flavored product.