NC’s CHAPEL HILL – There are variations among various types of electronic cigarettes. According to a recent peer-reviewed paper from UNC School of Medicine researchers led by toxicologist Ilona Jaspers, PhD, director of the UNC Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma, and Lung Biology and director of the UNC Curriculum in Toxicology and Environmental Medicine, some fourth-generation models – like Juul devices – are connected with particular changes in markers of immune responses inside our airways.
Elise Hickman, PhD, a recent graduate from Jaspers’ lab, and colleagues discovered that users of fourth-generation nicotine-salt-containing devices exhibit a distinctive combination of cellular biomarkers suggestive of immune suppression. Their findings were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Jaspers, a professor of paediatrics, microbiology, and immunology, stated that “our work highlights the necessity of addressing device type in future clinical, epidemiological, and mechanistic investigations on the health impacts of e-cigarettes.” We also believe that this research will aid regulators in identifying the substances that have the greatest biological impact on the cells of the airways, which is crucial for preserving good health.
Over the past ten years, electronic cigarettes have become more and more popular. Some people started using them as a way to stop smoking since they believed vaping to be a safer long- and short-term alternative. Additionally, users believed vaping reduced their risk of developing cancer in the future because electronic cigarettes don’t contain tar.
It’s impossible to determine whether vaping lowers the risk of cancer or a variety of other chronic illnesses, according to Jaspers. “Research on the subject of smoking’s link to cancer took 60 years to prove.” There have been electronic cigarettes for roughly 15 years. In spite of this, she continued, “research from our lab and many others has demonstrated many of the same acute physiologic consequences in the airways that we have identified in smokers.” And we’ve noticed some immune system and cell alterations in vapers that, to be honest, we’ve never noticed before, which is really alarming.
The fact that teenagers who would not have otherwise tried cigarettes started using e-cigarettes worries researchers, physicians, and public health officials the most because they contain thousands of chemicals, many of which the FDA has approved for consumption but not inhalation, as well as nicotine, a drug with its own health implications beyond addiction.
The immunological responses in smokers’ and e-cigarette users’ respiratory tracts are suppressed when they inhale nicotine aerosols that are chemically loaded. Studies, some of which were conducted at UNC, have described how various compounds in various e-cigarettes, including chemicals that are used to create the thousands of distinct flavours, have negative effects on the cells lining the airways. The goal of the Jaspers lab’s study of the effects of various e-cigarette device types was to be at the forefront of such research. Her team obtained central airway (sputum) samples from smokers, non-smokers, and users of third- and fourth-generation e-cigarette products for this investigation.
Devices from the third generation include box mods and vape pens. In the fourth generation, there are disposable e-cigarettes and nicotine-salt-containing e-cigarettes like Juul products, which have grown in popularity as a result of Juul product sales restrictions.
Since bronchial epithelial cells ordinarily form an intact barrier in the airways and are not present in sputum samples, the much higher number of bronchial epithelial cells identified in the sputum of fourth-generation e-cigarette users suggests airway damage. Fourth-generation e-cigarette users had considerably lower levels of two proteins, sICAM1 and sVCAM1, compared to all other groups. These proteins are crucial in the fight against sickness and infections.
In addition, the levels of the immune system-supporting proteins CRP, IFN-g, MCP-1, uteroglobin, MMP-2, and VEGF were all significantly lower in fourth generation e-cigarette users compared to third generation users. Therefore, our immune systems are repressed to a greater extent the more decreased these proteins are. Fourth generation e-cigarette users had the most noticeable changes out of all the groups, indicating a shift away from immune homeostasis, according to Hickman. This was another significant finding of the study, which she described as “a key finding when examining the mixture of immune markers overall rather than one by one.”
This study found no proof that e-cigarettes induce the long-term illnesses linked to cigarette smoking, such as cancer, emphysema, COPD, or others. The development of long-term health issues and susceptibility to inhaled infections, however, may be significantly influenced by changes in immune responses in the respiratory tract over a lengthy period of time, particularly for teenagers.
This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Ref: https://news.unchealthcare.org/2022/06/fourth-generation-vaping-devices-increase-risk-to-immune-cells/
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