How do e-cigarettes affect the baby during pregnancy? Can e-cigs make COPD worse? And what about the young people who are opting out of cigarettes and vejpar instead? These are some of the questions researchers sought to answer in 2020.
2020 was a busy year for research on e-cigarettes. The main focus has been on how young people use e-cigarettes and how the technology actually works to quit smoking. At the same time, e-cigarettes and nicotine have increasingly become a hot political issue. Research and results have become the battleground in an ideological debate. Concepts such as harm reduction and absolute risks are loaded with explosive power that easily explodes in media reporting. Vejpkollen's mission, however, is to give readers the opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff. At least a little bit.
E-cigarettes to quit smoking
The most startling findings of the year are actually about smoking cessation. In mid-autumn, the prestigious Cochrane Library published a report on e-cigarettes as a method for quitting smoking. This was not really news. That e-cigarettes are more effective than traditional nicotine medicines has been established by researchers through randomized trials for some years now. But these have been individual, small-scale studies that do not usually influence politicians or public health authorities to any great extent.
Twice as effective as nicotine medicines
But Cochrane is something else. The Institute's reports form the basis for treatments of diseases and health care throughout the world, including in Sweden. The role of the Institute leads to high standards of credibility and integrity. The Cochrane report is a compilation of over 50 randomized trials comparing the effectiveness of e-cigarettes with traditional nicotine medicines. And according to Cochrane nicotine e-cigarettes are by far the most effective way to quit smoking, twice as much as patches and gum, especially when combined with professional support. What the research means for the future remains to be seen.
Focus on pregnant women and e-cigarettes
However, the fact that e-cigarettes are an effective way to quit smoking does not mean that vejping itself is harmless. For smokers, it is a matter of relative risk, where the confirmed harmfulness of smoke is set against the unknown risks of vapor. During the year, several studies focused on studying the effects of vejp in particularly vulnerable groups. Researchers at the Infants University Hospital in Dublin wanted to study the relative risk between smoking and vejping during pregnancy. By following pregnant smokers, non-smokers and former smokers who were now vejping, they concluded that newborn babies of vejping mothers had the same birth weight as babies of non-smokers. The research was published this spring in the International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology.
E-cigarettes helped COPD patients
Vaping as an alternative to smoking was also highlighted in a qualitative study of Smoking COPD patients in Italy. Doctors followed patients who switched from cigarettes to an electronic alternative over a period of five years. They found that e-cigarettes were effective in keeping cigarettes away, but also that vejp use did not seem to worsen the course of COPD. On the contrary, vejp users followed the same pattern as patients who used nicotine replacement therapy and had more positive outcomes. E-cigarettes are simply reliable tools to improve the diagnosis of COPD patients, was the message when the long-term study was published in the fall.
Different flavors - different risks
Flavors are important to vejpers who opt out of cigarettes. Several studies show that. However, flavorings also bring various chemicals, in addition to propylene glycol and glycerine, into the risk picture. The vapor contains only five percent of the harmful substances found in tobacco smoke. And although flavorings make up a very small part of the vapor, it is still a so-called absolute risk. Studies on individual flavors are few, but they are even more important as many users want to achieve as much harm reduction as possible. One study from the United States, which unfortunately received limited attention in the general media, addresses this very issue. Vejpkollen wrote about the study in the fall.
The kids are allright
Despite the growing body of research on vejping and harm reduction, it is the issue of young people and e-cigarettes that overshadows most. And it is here, in particular, that research and policy are beginning to intertwine. Reports in the mainstream media that vejpning is attracting young non-smokers to smoking have been appearing regularly. At the same time, more and more studies show that the relationship is probably the opposite. The majority of young people who use e-cigarettes regularly are already habitual smokers. And just like adults, they use e-cigarettes to quit smoking.
Young people prefer e-cigarettes
In 2020, Vejpkollen has reported on research that seeks to uncovering underlying factors among young people interested in using nicotine. Smokers, vejp users and snus users have much in common in terms of background: smoking parents, social status, risk-taking and home situation are important common factors. In the past, smoking has been the most popular way of using nicotine in this group. Today, e-cigarettes are attracting them instead. This leads to an important discussion, which is too often overlooked. A major US study recently found that e-cigarettes are Eradicating smoking among young people. The question is what happens when e-cigarettes as an alternative become more restricted? We shall see.
E-cigarettes and stroke?
Finally, the year saw a major scandal in the scientific community. Well-known anti-tobacco activist Stanton Glantz published a report in 2019 claiming that vejp users are as likely (or more likely) to suffer a stroke as traditional smokers. His report dropped like a bombshell and recognized legislators all over the world. However, when other researchers examined the data, it turned out that Glanz's claim was not supported by the basic data (statistics from US studies). Several of the vejpers Glanz studied were found to have had their stroke before they started using e-cigarettes. But Glanz chose to ignore this. In early 2020, the journal that published the study chose to retract it.
Political research a threat to public health
Stanton Glanz has been influential among major organizations pushing for tighter regulation of e-cigarettes, including the WHO. But the fact that a scientist, knowingly or unknowingly, withholds facts just to pursue a political line (in this case, to limit the development of harm-reducing consumer products) is not only worrying. It is a direct threat to public health, according to many health researchers. After all, why would smokers opt out of cigarettes in favor of a less harmful alternative, if it doesn't matter anyway?
Stanton Glanz retired somewhat unexpectedly in the summer of 2020.
New year - new findings on e-cigs
Vejpkollen looks forward to a 2021 with many more studies on e-cigarettes and vejpning. At the beginning of the year, the UK Department of Health its ongoing compilation on vejpning, health risks and harm reduction. At the same time, we follow some major long-term studies on vejpning among former non-smokers. And we must not forget the independent studies on nicotine and Covid-19 which is currently underway on a global scale. It will be an exciting year!
Superbly well written! I will check the study that did not attract much attention (rönt is missing in the text f ö) and was unsure myself whether Professor P. N. S. Glans during the year had to withdraw story about MI or Stroke, it was MI last year which is heart attack. Frej Larsson has just released a record with a trudilut about Heart Attack. Helenamiraklet which is also P. Glans is also heart attacks but it is only excoriated, not retracted, unfortunately I must say. I have it in my mind that a couple of hundred "dens" with very small populations were skimmed. Such places can easily have double one year and half the third year and cut the year in between by something, pure coincidence. The small towns that were in the "half" situation during the study period were included in the study. The city of Helena was included and the conclusion was that smoking bans and especially bans in pubs immediately gave massive positive effects, such as lowering the frequency of heart attacks by about 50%. Stroke from nicotine, on the other hand, is probably pretty well researched and for once just in Sweden and actually communicated honestly internationally. You probably don't mention it if you're not asked, but if you are. Higher mortality in the first 30 days when it is "critical" is what you can see compared to the never group. Even if it's not critical, you have to be in the ICU. However, those in the study definitely belong to the ICU category of patients and probably the most severely affected (stroke-prone) by their stroke to use some old words.
By the way, where is the question?