Chilean scientists make surprising discovery about the effects of vaporizers

The use of electronic nicotine delivery systems, such as vaporizers or electronic cigarettes, has increased significantly in recent years, particularly among young adults and adolescents.

This is why a team of academics, among whom is Dr. Constanza Silva Gallardo, academic at the Center for Research on Society and Health (CISS) of the Great university and the Millennium Nucleus for drug policy assessment and analysis (nDP) set out to study for the first time the relationship between the use of these electronic devices and adolescents with early pubertal development.

This is because other research has shown thate there is a higher risk of traditional cigarette use among adolescents who develop earlier than their peers.

Thus, the authors took a sample of 11,445 adolescents (5,697 boys, 5,748 girls) from Millennial Cohort Study (MCS) from the United Kingdom, born between 2000 and 2002, and examined whether early puberty is associated with the risk of using e-cigarettes, tobacco cigarettes, or both (dual use) at age 14.

The results showed that at age 14, timing of pubertal development was not associated with e-cigarette use in either gender. but yes with smoking and dual use in children.

Additionally, other environmental and contextual variables have been found associated with e-cigarette use. For example, tobacco cigarette consumption by parents, peers and time spent unsupervised.

“What had been studied for a long time, that girls who developed early were at greater risk of smoking tobacco cigarettes, was not replicated. . Thus, neither in girls nor in boys, have we observed that precocious development, that is to say early or even late pubertal development, considered as a protective factor for adolescence, is associated to smoking electronic cigarettes”, indicates the study. in biobehavioral health. In this way, Regardless of children’s developmental stages, everyone is at the same risk from using these e-cigarettes.

For the researcher, Aggressive marketing campaigns by e-cigarette manufacturers could endanger teens who might not try cigarettes. “The sprays are super striking, there are different flavors and colors and some are odorless, but its use could cause obstructive diseases . In some cases its composition is unknown and lung burns have already been reported,” he said.

Even if experimentation is normal in adolescence, “the subject of vaporizers is positioned as something less harmful than cigarettes, but they contain high levels of nicotine, which makes them extremely addictive and it’s your developing brain that receives all this stuff. “, he stressed.

The results of this research were published in the journal Drug and alcohol addiction from Elsevier.

As, Dr. Silva Gallardo announced that she now wants to study behavioral factors related to electronic cigarette use with nicotine and THC in Chilean adults and also carry out a study on the liquids that consumers use , as it has been found that some of them may contain fungi and bacteria that can cause lung damage. This study would be the first compilation in the country on the contextual factors and patterns of use of electronic devices, whether they contain nicotine, THC or both.