New UC study critical of vaping's effectiveness in getting people to quit smoking
A lot of smokers are switching to e-cigarettes to try and kick their nicotine fix, but does vaping really help kick the habit?
University of California researchers are trying to answer that question.
"When we look at the U.S. population of cigarette smokers, we're just not seeing that e-cigarettes are helping them quit," said Natalie Quach, a bio-statistics PhD student at UC San Diego.
Quach is the
study's first author
. She says they analyzed data from over 6,000 U.S. smokers.
"One of our findings shows that, among smokers who vape daily, there's about a 14.7% drop in vaping and smoking cessation rate," Quach said.
Not only that, but they found vaping could have the opposite effect on someone who wants to quit.
"This suggests that vaping is prolonging both smoking and nicotine dependence among U.S. smokers," Quach said.
There's also the question of if vaping is better for you. Quach says we really don't know.
"Right now, it's too early to tell what the long-term consequences of e-cigs will be. But research that has come out so far shows that they're not harmless," Quach said.
Natalie says she's not trying to tell people what to do, but just wants everyone to have information to make an informed decision.
The project was supported by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program of the University of California Office of the President.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Medscape
6 hours ago
- Medscape
As Cannabis Users Age, Health Risks Appear To Grow
Benjamin Han, a geriatrician and addiction medicine specialist at the University of California-San Diego, tells his students a cautionary tale about a 76-year-old patient who, like many older people, struggled with insomnia. 'She had problems falling asleep, and she'd wake up in the middle of the night,' he said. 'So her daughter brought her some sleep gummies' — edible cannabis candies. 'She tried a gummy after dinner and waited half an hour,' Han said. Feeling no effects, she took another gummy, then one more — a total of four over several hours. Han advises patients who are trying cannabis to 'start low; go slow,' beginning with products that contain just 1 or 2.5 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive ingredient that many cannabis products contain. Each of the four gummies this patient took, however, contained 10 milligrams. The woman started experiencing intense anxiety and heart palpitations. A young person might have shrugged off such symptoms, but this patient had high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia. Frightened, she went to an emergency room. Lab tests and a cardiac work-up determined the woman wasn't having a heart attack, and the staff sent her home. Her only lingering symptom was embarrassment, Han said. But what if she'd grown dizzy or lightheaded and was hurt in a fall? He said he has had patients injured in falls or while driving after using cannabis. What if the cannabis had interacted with the prescription drugs she took? 'As a geriatrician, it gives me pause,' Han said. 'Our brains are more sensitive to psychoactive substances as we age.' Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia now allow cannabis use for medical reasons, and in 24 of those states, as well as the district, recreational use is also legal. As older adults' use climbs, 'the benefits are still unclear,' Han said. 'But we're seeing more evidence of potential harms.' A wave of recent research points to reasons for concern for older users, with cannabis-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations rising, and a Canadian study finding an association between such acute care and subsequent dementia. Older people are more apt than younger ones to try cannabis for therapeutic reasons: to relieve chronic pain, insomnia, or mental health issues, though evidence of its effectiveness in addressing those conditions remains thin, experts said. In an analysis of national survey data published June 2 in the medical journal JAMA , Han and his colleagues reported that 'current' cannabis use (defined as use within the previous month) had jumped among adults aged 65 or older to 7% of respondents in 2023, from 4.8% in 2021. In 2005, he pointed out, fewer than 1% of older adults reported using cannabis in the previous year. What's driving the increase? Experts cite the steady march of state legalization — use by older people is highest in those states — while surveys show that the perceived risk of cannabis use has declined. One national survey found that a growing proportion of American adults — 44% in 2021 — erroneously thought it safer to smoke cannabis daily than cigarettes. The authors of the study, in JAMA Network Open , noted that 'these views do not reflect the existing science on cannabis and tobacco smoke.' The cannabis industry also markets its products to older adults. The Trulieve chain gives a 10% discount, both in stores and online, to those it calls 'wisdom' customers, 55 or older. Rise Dispensaries ran a yearlong cannabis education and empowerment program for two senior centers in Paterson, New Jersey, including field trips to its dispensary. The industry has many satisfied older customers. Liz Logan, 67, a freelance writer in Bronxville, New York, had grappled with sleep problems and anxiety for years, but the conditions grew particularly debilitating 2 years ago, as her husband was dying of Parkinson's disease. 'I'd frequently be awake until 5 or 6 in the morning,' she said. 'It makes you crazy.' Looking online for edible cannabis products, Logan found that gummies containing cannabidiol, known as CBD, alone didn't help, but those with 10 milligrams of THC did the trick without noticeable side effects. 'I don't worry about sleep anymore,' she said. 'I've solved a lifelong problem.' But studies in the United States and Canada, which legalized nonmedical cannabis use for adults nationally in 2018, show climbing rates of cannabis-related health care use among older people, both in outpatient settings and in hospitals. In California, for instance, cannabis-related emergency room visits by those 65 or older rose, to 395 per 100,000 visits in 2019 from about 21 in 2005. In Ontario, acute care (meaning emergency visits or hospital admissions) resulting from cannabis use increased fivefold in middle-aged adults from 2008 to 2021, and more than 26 times among those 65 and up. 'It's not reflective of everyone who's using cannabis,' cautioned Daniel Myran, an investigator at the Bruyère Health Research Institute in Ottawa and lead author of the Ontario study. 'It's capturing people with more severe patterns.' But since other studies have shown increased cardiac risk among some cannabis users with heart disease or diabetes, 'there's a number of warning signals,' he said. For example, a disturbing proportion of older veterans who currently use cannabis screen positive for cannabis use disorder, a recent JAMA Network Open study found. As with other substance use disorders, such patients 'can tolerate high amounts,' said the lead author, Vira Pravosud, a cannabis researcher at the Northern California Institute for Research and Education. 'They continue using even if it interferes with their social or work or family obligations' and may experience withdrawal if they stop. Among 4,500 older veterans (with an average age of 73) seeking care at Department of Veterans Affairs health facilities, researchers found that more than 10% had reported cannabis use within the previous 30 days. Of those, 36% fit the criteria for mild, moderate, or severe cannabis use disorder, as established in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. VA patients differ from the general population, Pravosud noted. They are much more likely to report substance misuse and have 'higher rates of chronic diseases and disabilities, and mental health conditions like PTSD' that could lead to self-medication, she said. Current VA policies don't require clinicians to ask patients about cannabis use. Pravosud thinks that they should. Moreover, 'there's increasing evidence of a potential effect on memory and cognition,' said Myran, citing his team's study of Ontario patients with cannabis-related conditions going to emergency departments or being admitted to hospitals. Compared with others of the same age and sex who were seeking care for other reasons, research shows these patients (ages 45 to 105) had 1.5 times the risk of a dementia diagnosis within 5 years, and 3.9 times the risk of that for the general population. Even after adjusting for chronic health conditions and sociodemographic factors, those seeking acute care resulting from cannabis use had a 23% higher dementia risk than patients with noncannabis-related ailments, and a 72% higher risk than the general population. None of these studies were randomized clinical trials, the researchers pointed out; they were observational and could not ascertain causality. Some cannabis research doesn't specify whether users are smoking, vaping, ingesting or rubbing topical cannabis on aching joints; other studies lack relevant demographic information. 'It's very frustrating that we're not able to provide more individual guidance on safer modes of consumption, and on amounts of use that seem lower-risk,' Myran said. 'It just highlights that the rapid expansion of regular cannabis use in North America is outpacing our knowledge.' Still, given the health vulnerabilities of older people, and the far greater potency of current cannabis products compared with the weed of their youth, he and other researchers urge caution. 'If you view cannabis as a medicine, you should be open to the idea that there are groups who probably shouldn't use it and that there are potential adverse effects from it,' he said. 'Because that is true of all medicines.'
National Geographic
6 hours ago
- National Geographic
Scientists are solving the mystery of how axolotls regrow limbs
A wounded axolotl can regenerate an entire lost leg or only its pinky toe. How the mass of cells that migrate to the wound site, known as a blastema, knows exactly what's needed is a key question the new paper helps answer. 'Evidence suggests it's the access to the appropriate genes after an injury that enable them to regenerate an arm. So they can turn on those programs that built the arm in the first place,' Monaghan says, referring to the gene Shox, which initially creates and then recreates the long bones needed to make an arm or leg. Monaghan also found an enzyme called CYP26B1 reduces the amount of retinoic acid at the site to exactly the level needed for a particular body part. It's the quantity of the retinoid that tells the cells what it is building, the researchers found. So the mass of cells capable of forming an entire arm has more than those making a hand or, at even lower amounts, a finger. In humans as well as other animals, retinoic acid is integral to cell differentiation and growth. Its role in human development is so important that women are urged to avoid the oral acne retinoid medication isotretinoin during pregnancy so as not to interfere with natural levels—although recent research found no increased risk of birth defects or disabilities. Rather than create the retinoic acid, the enzyme assesses current levels and reduces it to the desired amount. This was unexpected, Monaghan says, and crucial to understanding the process humans might one day use to regenerate limbs, too. Advances in gene editing could one day unlock major innovations in medical treatment. Scientists hope they could even figure out how to regrow human limbs. Photograph By Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University Could humans one day regrow missing limbs? Somewhere back in our evolutionary tree, humans and other mammals lost the ability to regrow severed appendages, a trade-off that comes with our more complex, higher-functioning parts. (One exception: newborn babies can regrow fingertips.) Scientists are hopeful these regenerative capacities remain hidden in our biology. If so, 'we can learn to unlock them, potentially restoring greater regenerative potential than we currently see,' says Thomas Rando, director of the Broad Stem Cell Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in this study. Rando believes even the manipulation of human stem cells he and others are studying may benefit from the axolotl research. 'In mammals, we rely on skin stem cells to make skin, bone stem cells to make bone, and muscle stem cells to make muscle,' he says. What isn't known is how to make these cells produce multiple tissues at once, which is necessary to regenerate a functioning limb. Learning how amphibians successfully do this could yield treatments that entice stem cells to mimic those actions. (The ability to reverse damage to your lungs and heart is tantalizingly close.)
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
CO2 levels just broke another record. Here's what that means
When man first walked on the moon, the carbon dioxide concentration in Earth's atmosphere was 325 parts per million (ppm). By 9/11, it was 369 ppm, and when COVID-19 shut down normal life in 2020, it had shot up to 414 parts ppm. This week, our planet hit the highest levels ever directly recorded: 430 parts per million. For 67 years, the observatory on Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano has been taking these measurements daily — tracking the invisible gas that is building up in our atmosphere and changing life on Earth. The record is known as the Keeling Curve. Charles David Keeling began those recordings, some of the first in the world to measure CO2 concentration over time. His son, Ralph Keeling, born one year before the observatory opened, has witnessed the rapid increase firsthand over his lifetime. "I was a teenager when I first started to appreciate what my father was doing and how it might be significant," Keeling told CBC News. Back then it was around 330 ppm. Keeling, a geochemistry professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, took over the research once his father passed away in 2005. "This problem is not going away, and we're moving further and further into uncharted territory, and almost certainly, very dangerous territory." The build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere isn't visible to the naked eye, but its concentration matters because of the greenhouse effect. Like the glass walls that trap heat from the sun in an actual greenhouse, gases in our atmosphere such as CO2 and methane also trap heat from the sun. At the start of the Industrial Revolution, ice core samples show CO2 levels were around 280 parts per million but as they rose, warming has increased by about 1.3 C over the pre-industrial average. That's led to rising temperatures and leading to more frequent and extreme weather, like heat waves, floods, wildfires and droughts. While many have heard about the goals of limiting warming to 1.5 C or 2 C above pre-industrial levels, there have also been efforts to return CO2 levels to below 350 parts per million, as a key part of limiting the damage from climate change. The record highs have continued though. Just in the last year, CO2 readings from May have increased more than three parts per million — that many more molecules of CO2 trapping heat and contributing to warming. "We know why it's rising faster than ever, it's because we're burning more fossil fuels each year," said Keeling. Damon Matthews, a climate scientist and professor at Concordia University in Quebec, also says he's concerned and isn't surprised that there are new records every year. "If we want to actually stabilize CO2 levels in the atmosphere, we would need to cut global emissions by more than 50 per cent, and we're nowhere near doing that," he said, adding that there are other gases at play but CO2 is the dominant influence. "Every May, we're going to see a new record of atmospheric CO2, until we actually make a lot more progress on climate mitigation than we have today." The annual cycle, peaking in late spring in the northern hemisphere, is tied to plant photosynthesis — CO2 concentrations drop in the summer as plants absorb the gas and release oxygen. In 2021, the International Energy Agency said that if the world wants to limit global warming and reach net-zero by 2050, there could be no new coal, oil or gas projects. Matthews is part of Canada's net-zero advisory body and says he's seen some progress in decreasing CO2 emissions the last few years, but not enough. He says Europe's emissions have been going down for decades, and that last year CO2 emissions in China didn't increase. However, he says Canada still lags behind other countries, and the U.S. is trending the other way. "There's lots of policy options, certainly focusing on expanding the oil and gas industry in Canada right now is not going to get us where we need to go in terms of climate," he said. "We just need to stop arguing about whether it's a priority and start doing the things that we know will help to solve the problem."
