New Delhi, India

Smoking tobacco products such as cigarettes causes a number of health hazards, like lung cancer and a range of heart diseases. As the world moved on to the information age in the past decade, electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, emerged as a potentially safer alternative. However, recent studies conclusively point out that e-cigarettes come wrapped with their own health risks.

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A team of researchers led by the University of California’s Dr Matthew Springer, and funded by the California-based National Institutes of Health (NIH), found that both tobacco cigarette smokers and e-cigarette smokers had signs of increased inflammation in blood vessels and higher risk of blood clots. The research had a volunteer base of 120 adults aged 21 to 50, of whom 42 regularly used e-cigarettes, 28 smoked tobacco cigarettes, and 50 used neither. 

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The researchers further compared blood vessels in non-smokers by using ultrasound to measure blood-vessel function and found that the blood vessels of both tobacco cigarette smokers and e-cigarette smokers were less expandable. 

As a sign of ‘impaired blood vessel function’, the serum from e-cigarette users caused the cells to become more permeable or leaky than serum from tobacco smokers or non-smokers, the research revealed. 

“These findings suggest that using the two products together, as many people do, could increase their health risks compared to using them individually,” Dr. Matthew Springer, who led the research, said in a statement to the journal ‘Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology’ published on October 26.

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Most people in the study used earlier models of e-cigarettes, rather than currently popular ones. More work is needed to understand the health effects of different e-cigarette models, the study said. 

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