Teenagers and young adults who vape are often more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those who do not, a new study by Stanford researchers found. A young person who has vapened en Smoked cigarettes were seven times more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19, according to the study published today in Journal of Adolescent Health. Someone who only vomited was five times as likely to be diagnosed.
Public health officials should be concerned about vaping as they try to control the ongoing pandemic and as the number of young people testing positive grows, experts say The edge. Not only that, but the vulnerability of young vapors to COVID-19 should inform how regulators are tackling the popularity of e-cigarettes, say the authors of the new paper.
“When I first started seeing the stories come out that adolescents and young adults were suddenly diagnosed with COVID-19 and actually became ill, one of the thoughts I had was, ‘wow, could this study explain that in part? ” says Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, senior author of the study.
The proportion of young people infected with COVID-19 has recently risen dramatically, the World Health Organization found this month. Of the 6 million people with the disease worldwide for whom the WHO had data on age, the percentage aged 15 to 24 dropped from 4.5 per cent on 24 February to 15 per cent on 12 July.
Halpern-Felsher’s research does not exactly show how vaping increases a young person’s chances of getting sick. This may be due to the way vaping affects the lungs or the immune system – or vapers may be more exposed to COVID-19 for other reasons. People who vape tend to share devices and touch their faces more when they puff, the paper puts it.
However, after outbreaks of vaping-associated lung injuries last year, “this is another sign that e-cigarettes are not healthy,” says Halpern-Felsher. “Look, this is a pandemic … this is the time to stop and not start arming,” she says.
‘I do not think anyone will be shocked by the results. I think people [will say] we saw this coming, ”says Ana María Rule, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Technology at Johns Hopkins, who was not involved in the study. She notes that COVID-19 and electronic cigarettes affect the same parts of the lungs.
While the results may not be surprising, it is an important study, according to Rule. Researchers have suspected that vaping would lead to long-term health effects. “What this [study] is changing, is that we now see that it may have short-term health effects, ‘she says.
The findings of the new paper are based on an online survey conducted in May of 4,351 residents of the U.S. between the ages of 13 and 24. The sample reflects approximately equal numbers of people of different ages, races, and genders, and the results were adjusted for confounding variables such as the number of COVID-19 cases in the states of survey participants and whether participants followed farm instructions .
It is also important to note that, unlike similar studies looking for links between cigarette smoke and COVID-19 outcomes, the new study is population-based. Earlier, COVID-19 patients were screened, while the new study included more people than just those who already tested positive. That makes it more of an objective sample, Halpern-Felsher explains.
The new paper calls on the Food and Drug Administration to regulate e-cigarettes and reach out to teens about the switch between vaping and COVID-19 as the pandemic in the US continues to be devastating. In addition, health care providers should ask patients if they have a history of guns or smoke, Halpern-Felsher and her co-authors write in the newspaper. Eventually, that could give doctors a better understanding of what risks their young patients are at during the pandemic.
