Vaping increases asthma risk by more than 200 percent, a major analysis shows
Vaping increases the risk of developing asthma by more than 200 percent, a major new analysis has found.
Researchers at the University of Texas looked at the health data of more than 40,000 people of all ages over the course of five years.
At the start of the 2022 analysis, none of the participants had asthma.
By the end of the study, they found that about ten in a thousand adults had developed the common respiratory disease.
However, those who had used e-cigarettes in the 30 days before the final analysis had a 252 percent higher risk of developing asthma at a young age, before age 27, compared to those who did not use e-cigarettes.
E-cigarettes are seen as a safer smoking alternative. In reality, researchers have found that its use dramatically increases the risk of developing asthma
Among teens, there was no significant association between e-cigarette use, according to data from the long-term national Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study.
Dr. Adriana Perez, data scientist and author of the study, said her team’s findings could help them “motivate users to quit.”
The report was published in the journal JAMA network opened.
The myth that vaping is a safer smoking alternative has shattered in recent years, as increasing use of e-cigarettes comes with increasing lung problems.
Vaping is believed to send thousands of irritants and metal particles through the windpipe, including chromium, manganese, nickel and lead.
Asthma, which affects an estimated 25 million Americans, causes the airways to become inflamed, narrow and swell, and produce extra mucus, making it difficult to breathe.
Johns Hopkins Medicine study completed almost 11 percent of e-cigarette users reported having asthma, compared to eight percent of those who had never used the devices.
Jackson Allard vaped from the age of fourteen, mainly nicotine, but also marijuana. He developed a lung infection that caused his chest to fill with fluid
The permanent damage to his lungs required a double transplant, a rare event for such a young person
Further, about 11 percent of those who said they used e-cigarettes said they had chronic bronchitis, emphysema or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, compared to 5.6 percent of people who said they had never used e-cigarettes.
Vaping nicotine is said to be a safer way to smoke because it does not produce the carcinogenic smoke of a traditional cigarette.
But a wide range of experts in the US have warned of irreversible lung damage in young patients using e-cigarettes.
One of those patients was 22-year-old North Dakota native Jackson Allard, who needed a rare double lung transplant after years of vaping led to a serious infection that left permanent damage.
He was on a ventilator for 70 days before undergoing surgery in January.
Allard’s grandmother, Doreen Hurlburt, said, “At one point a doctor said he had a 1 percent chance of living and we said, ‘He’s fighting, he’s been fighting, how many weeks are we going to give him a chance to fight, we ‘I’m not going to stop any procedures or anything like that.”
Mr Allard this week issued new warnings to young people to avoid e-cigarettes and marijuana vapes, which he says have caused his lifelong health problems.