A recent prospective longitudinal study published in BMJ Open, the world’s largest clinical journal, followed 17,539 smokers in the United States and found that long-term smoking was associated with high blood pressure, cholesterol and other diseases that were not reported among e-cigarette users. Another study from Penn State University showed that using e-cigarettes containing nicotine can help smokers quit and significantly reduce their dependence on cigarettes.
Despite the popularity of e-cigarettes, which are considered by many smokers around the world to be the best alternative to cigarettes, some members of the public remain unaware of the health effects of e-cigarettes, and many more are skeptical. In Public Health England’s 2015 “E-cigarettes: Evidence Update,” officials claim that “e-cigarettes can reduce the harm of cigarettes by about 95% compared to traditional tobacco. A growing body of evidence also suggests that e-cigarettes are safer than traditional combustible cigarettes. A recent paper published by the University of Michigan, Georgetown University and Columbia University: Time-varying associations between cigarette use and end use in incident hypertension in U.S. adults: a prospective longitudinal study. The paper says researchers constructed a temporal variable of tobacco exposure by following 17,539 U.S. smokers aged 18 years and older multiple times. The study found that self-reported hypertension occurred between waves two and five, and that smokers (but not e-cigarette users) had an increased risk of self-reported hypertension compared to those who did not use any nicotine products.
A similar follow-up study was conducted at Penn State University to assess smokers’ dependence on cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and total nicotine after switching to e-cigarettes. The study divided 520 participants into four groups. The first three groups received vape products with different nicotine concentrations, and the fourth group received nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and were asked to reduce their smoking by 75% for one month, followed by follow-up at one, three and six months.
The team found that all three groups using e-cigarettes reported lower cigarette dependence than the NRT group during all follow-up periods, and that the NRT group had a lower smoking rate than the median participant. There was also no significant increase in total nicotine exposure compared to baseline. Given these results, the researchers concluded that e-cigarettes may reduce dependence on cigarettes and allow smokers to quit long-term without increasing total nicotine intake.
This suggests that e-cigarettes are an effective alternative to other nicotine products in terms of smoking cessation and harm reduction, safely and rapidly reducing smokers’ dependence on cigarettes and minimizing the risk of human health effects.