E-cig users develop some of the same cancer-related molecular changes as cigarette smokers
Source: EurekAlert! Date: February 14, 2019 If you think vaping is benign, think again. A small USC study shows that e-cig users develop some of the same cancer-related molecular changes in oral tissue as cigarette smokers, adding to the growing concern that e-cigs aren't a harmless alternative to smoking. The research, published this week in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, comes amid a mushrooming e-cig market and mounting public health worries. On a positive note, recent research found vaping is almost twice as effective as other nicotine replacement therapies in helping smokers quit. But among adolescents, vaping now surpasses smoking, and there's evidence that e-cig use leads to nicotine addiction and future smoking in teens. "The existing data show that e-cig vapor is not merely 'water vapor' as some people believe," said Ahmad Besaratinia, an associate professor at Keck School of Medicine of USC and the study's senior author. "Although the concentrations of most carcinogenic compounds in e-cig products are much lower than those in cigarette smoke, there is no safe level of exposure to carcinogens." Besaratinia emphasized that the molecular changes seen in the study aren't cancer, or even pre-cancer, but rather an early warning of a process that could potentially lead to cancer if unchecked. The researchers looked at gene expression in oral cells collected from 42 e-cig users, 24 cigarette smokers and 27 people who didn't smoke or vape. Gene expression is the process by which instructions in our DNA are converted into a functional product, [...]