April 02, 2024
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A new study found that people who used e-cigarettes at any point in their lives were nearly 20% more likely to develop heart failure than people who had never used e-cigarettes.
People who vape have a significantly higher risk for heart failure, according to a new study.
Research presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session shows that people who used e-cigarettes at any point were 19% more likely to develop heart failure compared to people who had never used them.
Approximately 6.2 million people in the United States suffer from heart failure, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heart failure is when the heart cannot pump as much blood and oxygen as needed to other organs. It often worsens with age, leading to debilitating conditions, and has been linked to smoking.
Using the data and electronic health records of 175,667 participants from a study run by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, researchers analyzed associations between e-cigarette use and new heart failure diagnoses. Within a median follow-up period of 45 months, 3,242 participants had developed heart failure. The average age of those included in the study was 52.
"More and more studies are linking e-cigarettes to harmful effects and finding that it might not be as safe as previously thought," said Dr. Yakubu Bene-Alhasan, the study's lead author and a resident physician at MedStar Health in Baltimore. "The difference we saw was substantial. It's worth considering the consequences to your health, especially with regard to heart health."
Past research has shown e-cigarette use may be safer than smoking regular cigarettes and that it may help with smoking cessation, but increasingly vaping has been found to cause similar effects on lung and cardiovascular function as smoking.
Bene-Alhasan said e-cigarettes were not an effective way to quit smoking because many people continue vaping long after they stop smoking cigarettes. The CDC recommends a combination of counseling and medications, such as nicotine patches, as the best way to quit smoking.
The new study was observational, which allowed the researchers "to infer" but not "conclusively determine" a "causal relationship between e-cigarette use and heart failure."
"I think this research is long overdue, especially considering how much e-cigarettes have gained traction," Bene-Alhasan said. "We don't want to wait too long to find out eventually that it might be harmful, and by that time a lot of harm might already have been done. With more research, we will get to uncover a lot more about the potential health consequences and improve the information out to the public."
In 2018, the U.S. surgeon general issued an advisory calling youth e-cigarette use an "epidemic."
The Annual National Youth Tobacco Survey results for 2023 indicated that 10% of high school and middle school students – 2.8 million – reported use of any tobacco product. The most commonly used form e-cigarettes, according to the survey.
According to the CDC, 4.5% of Americans 18 and older were current e-cigarette users in 2021.
E-cigarettes are commonly referred to as "e-cigs," "e-hookahs," "mods" and "vape pens." Many e-cigarettes look like USB flash drives – the most common one being Juul. A typical Juul cartridge, or "pod," contains about the same amount of nicotine as a pack of 20 cigarettes, according to the surgeon general.
People also can use e-cigarettes to vape other drugs, most commonly marijuana.
