New research shows five-fold risk for people who use both cigarettes and e-cigarettes daily
Use of e-cigarettes every day can nearly double the odds of a heart attack, according to a new research involving nearly 70,000 people. It was led by researchers at UC San Francisco.
The research also found that dual use of e-cigarettes and conventional cigarettes — the most common use pattern among e-cigarette users — appears to be more dangerous than using either product alone. The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“Most adults who use e-cigarettes continue to smoke cigarettes,” said senior author Stanton Glantz, PhD, a UCSF professor of medicine and director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.
“While people may think they are reducing their health risks, we found that the heart attack risk of e-cigarettes adds to the risk of smoking cigarettes,” Glantz said. “Using both products at the same time is worse than using either one separately. Someone who continues to smoke daily while using e-cigarettes daily increases the odds of a heart attack by a factor of five.”
For those who used both products daily, the odds of having had a heart attack were 4.6 times that of people who had never used either product
Electronic cigarettes typically deliver an aerosol of nicotine and other flavors by heating a liquid and are promoted as a safer alternative to conventional cigarettes, which generate the nicotine aerosol by burning tobacco. While e-cigarettes deliver lower levels of cancer causing particles than conventional cigarettes, they deliver both ultrafine particles (1/50 to 1/100 the size of a human hair) and other toxins that have been linked to increased cardiovascular and non-cancer lung disease risks.
The new analysis involved 69,452 people who were interviewed through National Health Interview Surveys in 2014 and 2016. The researchers found that the total odds of having a heart attack were about the same for those who continued to smoke cigarettes daily as those who switched to daily e-cigarette use. For those who used both products daily, the odds of having had a heart attack were 4.6 times that of people who had never used either product.
According to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2016-17, 19.0% of men, 2.0% of women and 10.7% (99.5 million) of all adults in India currently smoke tobacco. More than 625000 children (10-14 years old) and 103614000 adults (15+ years old) continue to use tobacco each day, despite more than 932600 of its people being killed by tobacco-caused diseases.
The risks of e-cigarette use may dissipate rapidly when someone stops using them, that some people briefly experiment with e-cigarettes and stop using them before any lasting damage is done, or that e-cigarettes have not been available long enough to cause permanent damage to the cardiovascular system.
“The only way to substantially reduce the risk of a heart attack is to stop using tobacco,” Glantz said.
