E-cigarettes and vaping are popular among the younger generation living in urban areas, due to the influence of social media channels and an assumption that it is a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes. E-cigarettes were promoted as a way to get people out of their smoking habits but have in contrast shown that many people are not using them as a weaning mechanism but are rather addicted to them.

A recent study in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine found that e-cigarette users have more pulmonary inflammation than cigarette smokers and non-smokers. This study is the first to show that using e-cigarettes and vaping e-liquids causes a noticeably distinct inflammatory response in the lungs that appears different from smoking cigarettes.

The participants of the study were divided into three age and sex-matched groups. The first group had five e-cigarette users, the second group had five cigarette smokers and the third group had five individuals who have never smoked or vaped before. The three groups were subjected to F-NOS PET to quantify and compare lung inflammation.

This is the first PET (positron emission tomography) study to assess in vivo lung inflammation between users of cigarettes and e-cigarettes using a novel radiotracer, F-NOS. PET imaging using F-FDG was conducted in the past to study inflammation in smokers and e-cigarette users. However, it led to inconclusive results.

The iNOS is an enzyme that is over-expressed in e-cigarette users and cigarette smokers and is linked to acute and chronic inflammatory diseases, according to Dr Reagan Wetherill, the study’s lead author and professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. This qualifies e-cigarettes as a pertinent target for molecular imaging of inflammatory lung disease and lung inflammation.

The study reveals that vapers who use e-cigarettes exhibit more lung inflammation than those who have smoked cigarettes or never smoked before. The use of e-cigarettes may contribute to an increase in pulmonary inflammation because of the positive correlation between pulmonary and peripheral measures of inflammation. These results suggest that molecular imaging may be particularly well-positioned to identify and quantify any potential effects connected to e-cigarettes, which have been hailed as a safer mode for nicotine than traditional cigarettes.

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