Vaping May Make Lungs More Vulnerable to Infection

Vaping has been sold as a safer way to smoke — a way to get a nicotine high without the harmful effects of tobacco and smoke inhalation. But new research shows that inhaling nicotine as a vapor through e-cigarettes may damage the lungs, making them vulnerable to infection.
It may also generate the same kinds of harmful chemicals that smoking produces, the research found — although at a smaller scale.
"Our findings suggest that e-cigarettes are not neutral in terms of the effects on the lungs," senior author Shyam Biswal, PhD, a professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Bloomberg School, said in a press release.

For their research, scientists at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Health exposed mice to e-cigarette vapor in chambers. Levels of the vapor were measured to approximate the same levels of exposure for a person smoking e-cigarettes regularly for two weeks.
A second set of mice was exposed to normal air as a control. Then they tested to see how vulnerable each set of mice was to strains of pneumonia and sinusitis and Influenza A.
They found that those mice that had been exposed to e-cigarette vapor were much more likely to develop compromised immune responses to the viruses and bacteria than those mice that hadn’t been exposed to the vapors. In some cases mice with the compromised immune systems died from the infections.

"The e-cigarette exposure inhibited the ability of mice to clear the bacteria from their lungs, and the viral infection led to increased weight loss and death indicative of an impaired immune response," Thomas Sussan, PhD, lead author and an assistant scientist in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Bloomberg School explained in a press release.
The researchers say they believe this is the first study to test the effects of vaping on an animal model.  A study published recently in the journal Circulation on people suggested that e-cig vapors are high in nanoparticles that can trigger inflammation.
As part of their study, the Johns Hopkins researchers also tested e-cigarette vapor for the presence of free radicals — toxins found in cigarette smoke and air pollution. They found that e-cigarette vapor contains far fewer free radicals than cigarette smoke — 1 percent as much — but they were still present in e-cig vapors.
"We were surprised by how high that number was, considering that e-cigarettes do not produce combustion products," Sussan said. "Granted, it's 100 times lower than cigarette smoke, but it's still a high number of free radicals that can potentially damage cells."
As for U.S. regulation, the jury is still out on e-cigarettes — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced last spring that it was going to begin regulating e-cigarettes. Studies like this one, which appeared in the Feb. 4 issue of PLOS ONE, will be critical as health officials decide if and how to regulate the relatively new devices.
While some have cited the positive effects of e-cigarettes — an October 2014 study showed that six months of vaping led 21 percent of participants to quit regular cigarettes,  there is also concern that more young people may be picking up the e-cigarette habit than would be starting traditional smoking.
A CDC report late last year showed the number of teens using e-cigs has tripled over two years.  And E-cigarette sales are projected to overtake cigarette sales in the next decade.