Bad news for smokers turning to e-cigarettes as research suggests link to heart disease

New research has suggested that e-cigarettes and vape sticks are linked to heart disease, and two popular flavours are particularly toxic.

E-cigarettes aren’t considered as risky as regular cigarettes, but researchers have found a clue that their flavourings may be bad for the heart, with cinnamon and menthol potentially the most toxic.

Vaping and some flavourings, even without nicotine, triggered blood vessel dysfunction that can increase the risk of heart disease, researchers reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The New York Post reports that longtime smokers who switch to e-cigarettes in the hope of avoiding the cancer-causing chemicals in tobacco smoke may now have to think again.

This is really a warning shot that people should not be complacent and think that these e-cigarettes are completely safe, said Dr. Joseph Wu, director of Stanford University’s cardiovascular institute.

Cigarette smoking doesn’t just cause lung cancer. It’s a leading cause of heart attacks, too, and little is known about e-cigarettes and heart disease.

Chemicals in the inhaled vapour may pose unique risks that are important to understand, especially as more and more teens take up vaping.

It’s not possible for me to go into a patient and strip their artery and test it” for a reaction to vaping, said Dr Wu, of Stanford University.

So his team tried the next best thing for a newly published study - in laboratory dishes, they grew cells that normally line healthy human blood vessels.

They exposed the cells to six different e-cigarette flavourings, testing if the flavours — and not just the nicotine — caused any effects.

They also tracked what happened when those cells were bathed in blood taken from people right after they had an e-cigarette, the way chemicals from vaping would make their way to the cardiovascular system.

They also compared the cells’ exposure to blood from nonsmokers and people who smoked a regular cigarette.

And they found evidence that even without nicotine, vaping and some flavourings did indeed cause blood vessel dysfunction that can increase the risk of heart disease.

Cinnamon and menthol seemed the most toxic. But overall, cells showed signs of damage and were inflamed, less able to form new blood vessels or heal wounds.

The findings “suggest that even without the smoke of combustible cigarette products, there may be a smouldering fire of adverse health effects,” she wrote in an accompanying editorial.

Another study at a recent heart meeting looked at health records to conclude e-cigarette users had a higher risk of heart attack than people who neither vape nor use tobacco products, but that, too, was only a clue, not proof.