No Causality For Respiratory Symptoms
Researchers from CoEHAR say claims that vaping causes respiratory symptoms are completely lacking in evidence of causality
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by Dave Cross
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According to the CoEHAR authors “the significance of the findings needs careful review”.
The US studies concluded that “former and current e-cigarette use was associated with higher odds of developing wheezing-related respiratory symptoms”.
The responding comment by the researchers from CoEHAR and the University of Messina was published by the prestigious American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
CoEHAR states: “In the plethora of studies on the possible negative effects of electronic cigarettes on human health, it is often difficult to understand which results come from studies that follow specific research standards and rigorous methodologies.
“Recently, a longitudinal study by Xie et al. investigating the respiratory health effect of e-cigarette use in a nationally representative cohort of US young adults showed that both former and current ecig use was associated with higher odds of developing any respiratory symptom and wheezing.”
The researchers from CoEHAR and the Unit of Infectious Diseases, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine at the University of Messina, analysed the results by US researchers.
According to the published letter published, the results need careful review.
Davide Campagna (researcher of CoEHAR and first author of the study) stated that: “As in previous surveys investigating the association between EC use and respiratory symptoms, cigarette smoking history was either not considered or insufficiently adjusted for in the analysis. Using a binary version of the cigarette smoking status as a proxy for a measure of cumulative physiological damage is woefully incomplete“.
Evaluating the duration or the intensity of cigarette smoking is a better self-reported measure: for example, the use of pack-years of smoking shows a clear dose-response association for exposure to tobacco cigarettes and risk of new-onset asthma.
The letter states: “A binary measure of current smoking status is simply not able to capture all the dimensions of tobacco use that are relevant to health of outcomes, including respiratory symptoms and a more analytical approach (i.e. pack-years) is required.”
Grazia Caci, a researcher at the University of Messina added: “Studies which exposes a causality between electronic cigarette use and health effects should be carefully evaluated. In research studies, I think it is good to emphasise data by rationalising them as much as possible: the base should be the reasoning that leads to the result (confirmed or not) rather than purposely force the research activity in order to obtain the desired result.”
References:
- The Centre of Excellence for the acceleration of Harm Reduction at the University of Catania - https://www.coehar.org/
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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