A new study from the Lawson Health Research Institute in London, Ont., is uncovering the negative effects of vaping.
The findings, published in the PLOS ONE Journal by Lawson researchers, as well as Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, showed that vaping may negatively affect pulmonary surfactant in the lungs.
Surfactant is made of lipids and proteins, according to the study, and is a critical layer in the lungs that allows people to breathe with minimal effort by reducing surface tension. Without surfactant, more effort would be needed to breathe, and a person would need to seek medical help to do so.
According to Ruud Veldhuizen, a Lawson scientist and a professor at Schulich Medicine and Dentistry, vaping continues to be popular. Veldhuizen said that while using e-cigarettes is not necessarily smoking, “unfortunately, we don’t actually know what happens when you use an e-cigarette.”
Veldhuizen said the research asked a very simple question: “What happens when this vapour gets into the lungs and starts interacting with some of the material that is inside?”
In particular, Veldhuizen said researchers wanted to study the surfactant, calling it “a very important role in your lung. It kind of stabilizes it and prevents it from collapsing.”
The research team was able to study the effects by placing a film of surfactant inside a syringe and then using a vaping device to push aerosol into the syringe. This allowed the vapour to directly interact with the surfactant. The researchers then mimicked inhaling and exhaling vapour into the syringe about 30 times to resemble a “standard vaping session.”
While conducting the study, researchers found high surface tension levels in the surfactant, which suggested that it would not be as effective in supporting proper lung function.
“Our studies indicate that vaping is not as innocuous as people would hope,” Veldhuizen added. “Now, people that vape don’t have this effect immediately after vaping. But what I think happens is that by inhibiting or by impairing the surface film, you actually make people more susceptible to some of these other things that may happen to the lungs.”
Researchers also examined different vaping devices, flavours, additives and nicotine to see if their effects were any different.
“Nicotine didn’t have any worse effects on surface tension of surfactant compared to other e-liquids, but some flavourings like menthol e-liquid did,” explained Emma Graham, a master’s student at Schulich Medicine and Dentistry.
Explaining that while his team intends to further their study, Veldhuizen said that these findings could provide “an indication as to why people that vape have a susceptibility to develop lung injury, including those with respiratory viruses such as COVID-19.”
He also mentioned the effects vaping has on the research community, highlighting the need to release as much information to the general public as possible.
“As a next step, we hope to further investigate the effects of vaping on the lungs and how we can treat resulting injury,” Veldhuizen concluded.
Lawson researchers were the first in the world to report on a potential new type of vaping-related injury in 2019, according to the institution.
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