Electronic cigarettes may have been initially marketed as a healthier alternative to smoking tobacco products, but research showing that both can lead to the same diseases continues to surface. And now, a group of researchers are saying that vaping actually causes more damage to human DNA than smoking.
“For the first time, we showed that the more vapers used e-cigarettes, and the longer they used them, the more DNA damage occurred in their oral cells,” said Dr. Ahmad Besarantinia, professor of research population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California. “The same pattern held up in smokers.”
The study builds on previous research conducted by Besaratinia and his team, which showed that vaping has a link to genetic alterations as well as other biological changes that lead to disease. The researchers recruited 72 healthy adults and split them into three groups — current vapers (who never smoked), current smokers (who never vaped) and people who never tried either habit.
The results found that DNA damage was 2.6 times greater in vapers and 2.2 times greater in smokers compared to that of non-users. Vapers who used pods had the highest levels of DNA damage, followed by those who used mods — which are larger. The team also found that sweet-flavored vapes had an association with the highest levels of DNA damage, followed by mint and fruit flavors.
The findings are important to public health, considering that vapes are most popular among young people. In the U.S. alone, 2.5 million young adults vape every day.
