Vaping might not be as safe as we once thought, especially when it comes to the health of our heart.

Research has warned that people who smoke e-cigarettes are more likely to suffer from conditions including heart disease and stroke.

As of 2021, 4.5% of adults used e-cigarettes in the US, according to the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

Vaping is particularly prevalent among young people, with roughly one in seven high school students using e-cigarettes, according to the US Food and Drug Administration.

While vaping is viewed as a safer alternative to smoking tobacco, previous studies have associated e-cigarette use with an increased risk for lung disease, asthma, damaged blood vessels and heart disease, particularly among those with pre-existing health conditions.

Now, a study led by MedStar Health in Baltimore has shown that e-cigarette users may be 19% more likely to develop heart failure compared to those who have never vaped.

"More and more studies are linking e-cigarettes to harmful effects and finding that it might not be as safe as previously thought," Yakubu Bene-Alhasan, a resident physician at MedStar Health in Baltimore and the study's lead author, said.

"The difference we saw was substantial. It's worth considering the consequences to your health, especially with regard to heart health."

Between 2011 and 2015, the use of e-cigarettes in the US spiked by 900%. The University of Kansas provide an insight into the potential health implications of vaping and specifically the potential risk of stroke.

The researchers studied 2016 data from the Behavioural Risk Factor Surveillance System survey, carried out each year by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Over 66,795 respondents used e-cigarettes regularly, while 343,856 had never used the devices. They also took into account information on the age and sex of participants, whether they smoked, had diabetes, how much they exercised and their BMI - body mass index.

A fifth of respondents who used e-cigarettes were younger on average compared with non-user. Vape users had higher chance of suffering from a stroke, angina and coronary heart disease, according to the study.

Dr. Paul Ndunda, author and assistant professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Kansas in Wichita, told Newsweek that the study is the first to show an association between e-cigarette use and stroke.

It is also one of the largest studies to show an association between e-cigarette use and heart disease, he said.

"This research calls for well designed, large, long-term population studies to assess whether e-cigarettes cause stroke and cardiovascular disease," he said.

Addressing the potential harms of vaping more generally, Ndunda said there is still a lot that we don't know about health effects of e-cigarettes.

The effects of nicotine on atherosclerosis (where plaque builds up inside your arteries) are also already well investigated.

Dr Aaron Scott of the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham in the UK, who was not involved in the study, explained to Newsweek.

“In terms of cardiovascular damage, the nicotine in e-cigarettes may, in the long run, prove to have similar effects to smoking traditional cigarettes, but until long term sequential data is obtained it remains speculation."

His colleague, Professor David Thickett, also of the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, agreed that observational studies such as this need to be "backed up by cohort studies that are followed over time."

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Sarene.Kloren@IOL.co.za

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