Study Finds Vaping has Long-Term Effect on the Heart for Adolescent Males But Not Females

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by MedicalXpress.

A new study by researchers at The Ohio State University College of Medicine gives insight into what happens to the cardiovascular system of adolescents when they vape.

In the mouse study, researchers found that vaping had a significant and long-term cardiovascular effect on adolescent males but not females. The results were published today in Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association.

Researchers said the findings heighten the concern about vaping, especially in youth.

“We don’t know the long-term effects of vaping because it’s only been around since the early 2000s. We haven’t had the time required to see what happens, especially with adolescents. To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate cardiac function in adolescent mice exposed to e-cigarette aerosol,” said Loren Wold, the study’s senior author and associate dean for research operations and compliance in the Ohio State College of Medicine.

The mice were exposed to an e-cigarette aerosol mixture of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin and nicotine, starting at the human equivalent of about age 12 and lasting until about age 30 in humans. Researchers found reduced heart function in males over time, but heart function in females remained unaffected. Females also had a substantially higher amount of CYP2A5 (CYP2A6 in humans), an enzyme that breaks down nicotine, than the males had.

The results were surprising. We were shocked at the amount of protection afforded to females,” Wold said. “The theory is that since the enzyme breaks down nicotine so much faster, the nicotine isn’t in the circulation as long and that may be why females exhibit protection from vaping.”

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-02-vaping-long-term-effect-heart-adolescent.html