The study showed that smoking both tobacco and electronic cigarettes causes increased inflammation.
Vaping (from English vaping – soaring) – vaping or inhaling the vapor of electronic cigarettes, vaporizers and other similar devices.
People have known about the health risks associated with tobacco smoking for a long time, but habit in most cases turns out to be stronger than common sense. Over the years, nicotine use has been linked to cancer, heart disease, strokes, and many other dangerous conditions.
So when e-cigarettes first appeared, there was hope that they would become a healthier alternative (relatively, of course).
But a study by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and published in the Journal of Molecular Medicine , has shown that both conventional and e-cigarettes can increase the risk of developing a severe form, such as Covid, in healthy young people.
Vapers are even more at risk of inflammatory lung disease than “regular” cigarette smokers.< br>
Both types of cigarettes also increase the likelihood of long-term cardiovascular complications that can occur after initial exposure to the virus.
In a UCLA press release, Dr. Theodoros Kelesidis, lead author of the study, explained that vaping was found to be not at all such an innocent invention as it might seem at first.
We are talking about many diseases, diseases associated with inflammation, for example, pneumonia. Regarding Covid, vaping alters the levels of key proteins that the virus uses to replicate.
As part of the study, experts studied plasma collected before the pandemic from 45 non-smokers, 30 e-cigarette users and 29 “regular” smokers. They then tested plasma samples to measure levels of proteins that SARS-CoV-2, the virus at the heart of the pandemic, needs to reproduce.
These proteins are ACE2, furin, Ang II, Ang 1-7, IL-6R, sCD163, L-selectin. And the last three proteins are collectively regulated in cells by a protein known as ADAM17.
It was found that plasma levels of furin, sCD163 and L-selectin were increased in the blood plasma of healthy young people who smoked tobacco or vape compared to non-smokers.
This suggests that healthy young smokers and vapers may have increased activity of the furin and ADAM17 proteins in immune cells as well as in surface cells such as those lining the lungs.
E-cigarette users may be at a higher risk of developing infections and inflammatory lung disease than non-smokers. E-cigarettes are unsafe and should only be used for as short a time as possible to quit smoking, the scientists noted.
The study also said that vaping can “cause inflammation of the lungs and increase the risk of lung disease ”.
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