E-cigarettes do NOT cause damage to blood vessels that lead to heart disease as debate over their safety rages on
- Cigarette smoke stopped wound healing at concentrations over 20%, shows test
- Vapour had no effect at 100% concentration and with twice as much nicotine
- But recent research has linked vaping to DNA damage and bladder cancer
- Public Health England say e-cigarettes are likely 95% less harmful than smoking
E-cigarettes do not cause damage to blood vessels which can lead to deadly heart disease, new research suggests.
Lab tests revealed vaping does not stop wounds healing like 'traditional' cigarettes are known to do.
Scientists did not see disruption to skin repair even at concentrations of a 'heavy vaper' and with double the amount of nicotine compared to smoke.
This is the findings from British American Tobacco (BAT), one of the world's five largest tobacco companies.
The safety of e-cigarettes has been hotly debated as it is estimated more than 9 million adults in the US and around 2.9 million in the UK vape.
'Our results suggest that chemicals in cigarette smoke that inhibit wound healing are either absent from e-cigarette vapour or present in concentrations too low for us to detect an effect,' says Dr James Murphy, head of reduced risk substantiation at BAT.
Vapour did not prevent wound healing with double the nicotine compared to smoke (file)
Smoking is a known risk factor for the development of heart disease, which is the number one cause of death globally.
It is thought the presence of damaged endothelial cells, which have an impaired ability to repair, plays a major role.
How the research was carried out
Researchers carried out a 'scratch test' which involved growing a layer of endothelial cells in the lab and then created an artificial wound to observe how long it takes to heal.
Images of cells exposed to cigarette smoke an vapour were captured of the beginning and at regular intervals during the 'healing' process for comparison.
The tests used smoke extract from a reference cigarette and vapour extract from two commercial e-cigarettes, Vype ePen and Vype eStick.
Smoke extract was then assessed at concentrations from 0 to 30 per cent.
To study the effects of heavy e-cigarette use, vapour was tested at concentrations between 40 and 100 per cent – over twice the nicotine.
Immediately after the wound was made, the cells were immersed in smoke or vapour extract for 20 hours.
The research, published in Toxicology Letters, found that cigarette smoke completely prevented wound healing at concentrations over 20 per cent.
Vapour had no effect, even at 100 per cent concentration and double the amount of nicotine relative to smoke.
Conflicting recent research
A recent study found that vaping using nicotine-based liquid could be as harmful as unfiltered cigarettes when it comes to causing DNA damage.
Another report earlier this month discovered chemicals in e-cigarettes are linked to cancer-related bladder tissue damage.
A team from the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville compared the urine of e-cigarettes users with that of nonsmokers.
Some 92 per cent of e-cigarette users' urine tested positive for two of the five compounds linked to bladder cancer.
Yet Public Health England have not altered its estimate that vaping is likely to be 95 per cent less harmful than smoking.
The NHS warns that as well as nicotine, e-cigarette liquid and vapour can contain 'potentially' harmful chemicals.
So vaping is 'not risk free', but carries 'a fraction of the risk of cigarettes'.
Its comments are: 'E-cigarettes are still fairly new and we won't have a full picture on their safety until they have been in use for many years.'
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