According to American research, electronic cigarettes increase the risk of chronic lung disease by 30%. Doctors dispute these results because the participants were mostly former smokers.
3.8% of French people use an electronic cigarette daily according to Public Health France. Considered useful in the fight against smoking, it is the subject of many controversies: would it be as or even more dangerous than tobacco? Or harmless? In mid-December 2019, researchers from the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) showed that vapers have a 30% increased risk of suffering from chronic lung disease. Several doctors contradict these results in the press.
A third of additional risk
In L’American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the research team publishes the conclusion of work carried out with 32,000 Americans. The latter were divided into 5 categories: smokers, ex-smokers, vapers, ex-vapers and those who have never been one or the other. “What we found was that for e-cigarette smokers, the risk of developing lung disease increased by about a third,” says Stanton Glantz, director of the Center for Cancer Research and Education. UCSF Tobacco Control. Asthma, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or emphysema: these are the main lung diseases likely to affect vapers according to this research.
All former smokers… or almost!
In Le Figaro, Professor Bertrand Dautzenberg, pulmonologist, protests against these results, because the vapers who participated were almost all former smokers. “They should have compared the rates of respiratory disease in ex-smokers who vape and ex-smokers who never vaped.” According to him, the statistics obtained in the study on vapers are comparable to those of smokers who have never vaped. “These results are biased by the fact that most vapers have smoked in the past,” adds John Britton, director of the Center for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at Britain’s University of Nottingham. And since smoking is an important cause of chronic lung disease, ex-smokers who vape inevitably have an additional risk of developing this type of disease, even long after quitting smoking.” According to previous research, tobacco, even in small quantities, is harmful to lung health: it is degraded from five cigarettes a day.
Favorable opinion of the Academy of Medicine
Science knows little about the long-term dangers of e-cigarettes. The studies carried out on the subject contradict each other. For smokers wanting to quit smoking, it is difficult to get an idea about these products. The Academy of Medicine wanted to reassure them: on December 12, 2019, it declared these devices “useful for quitting smoking”.
.
