March 29, 2024

More Likely To Relapse: E-Cigarettes Don’t Help Smokers Stay off Cigarettes

Nevertheless, there have been couple of research studies on whether smokers are able to transition to e-cigarettes– battery-operated gadgets that warm a liquid made from nicotine, flavorings and other chemicals to make an aerosol that users inhale into their lungs– without relapsing back to cigarette smoking.
John P. Pierce, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego Credit: University of California San Diego.
Released in the October 19, 2021, online concern of JAMA Network Open, an analysis by the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at University of California San Diego and UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center reports that e-cigarette usage– even every day– did not assist smokers successfully stay off cigarettes.
” Our findings suggest that people who quit cigarette smoking and changed to e-cigarettes or other tobacco items in fact increased their danger of a regression back to smoking over the next year by 8.5 portion points compared to those who stop using all tobacco products,” stated very first author John P. Pierce, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and UC San Diego Moores Cancer.
” Quitting is the most essential thing a smoker can do to enhance their health, but the proof indicates that changing to e-cigarettes made it less most likely, not most likely, to stay off of cigarettes.”
Researchers utilized data from the nationally representative Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) longitudinal study, carried out by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the FDA Center for Tobacco Products under agreement with Westat. The team identified 13,604 smokers in between in 2013 and 2015 who were followed over two sequential yearly studies to check out changes in usage of 12 tobacco items.
At the first yearly follow up, 9.4% of these developed cigarette smokers had stopped. Now considered “previous smokers,” 62.9% of these people remained tobacco free, while 37.1% had changed to another kind of tobacco use. Of these current cigarette smokers who switched to another item, 22.8% utilized e-cigarettes, with 17.6% of switchers utilizing e-cigarettes daily.
Karen Messer, Ph.D., teacher and chief of the Division of Biostatistics at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego Credit: University of California San Diego.
Current former smokers who changed to e-cigarettes were more most likely to be non-Hispanic white, have higher earnings, have higher tobacco reliance scores and view e-cigarettes as less hazardous than standard cigarettes.
” Our goal in this study was to assess whether recent former smokers who had actually switched to e-cigarettes or another tobacco product were less most likely to relapse to smoking compared to those who stayed tobacco complimentary,” stated senior author Karen Messer, Ph.D., professor and chief of the Division of Biostatistics at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health.
At the 2nd annual follow up, the authors compared the former smokers who were tobacco complimentary to those who had actually changed to e-cigarettes or other tobacco products. Individuals who switched to any other form of tobacco usage, consisting of e-cigarettes, were most likely to regression compared to former smokers who had given up all tobacco, by a total of 8.5 percentage points.
Among recent previous cigarette smokers who abstained from all tobacco products, 50% were 12 or more months off cigarettes at the 2nd follow up and were thought about to have successfully stop cigarette smoking; this compared to 41.5% of recent previous smokers who switched to any other form of tobacco usage, including e-cigarettes.
While people who switched were most likely to regression to smoking cigarettes, they were likewise most likely to try to stop again and be off cigarettes for a minimum of three months at the 2nd follow up. An additional follow-up study is needed to determine whether this is proof of a pattern of persistent stopping and relapsing to cigarette smoking, or whether it becomes part of progress toward effective stopping, said the researchers.
” This is the first study to take a deep look at whether switching to a less damaging nicotine source can be kept gradually without relapsing to cigarette smoking cigarettes,” stated Pierce. “If changing to e-cigarettes was a feasible method to give up cigarette smoking cigarettes, then those who changed to e-cigarettes ought to have much lower relapse rates to smoking. We discovered no proof of this.”
Referral: “Incidence of Cigarette Smoking Relapse Among Individuals Who Switched to e-Cigarettes or Other Tobacco Products” by John P. Pierce, PhD; Ruifeng Chen, MS; Sheila Kealey, MPH; Eric C. Leas, PhD; Martha M. White, MS; Matthew D. Stone, PhD; Sara B. McMenamin, PhD, MPH; Dennis R. Trinidad, PhD; David R. Strong, PhD; Tarik Benmarhnia, PhD and Karen Messer, PhD, 19 October 2021, JAMA Network Open.DOI: 10.1001/ jamanetworkopen.2021.28810.
Co-authors consist of: Ruifeng Chen, Sheila Kealey, Eric C. Leas, Martha M. White, Matthew D. Stone, Sara B. McMenamin, Dennis R. Trinidad, David R. Strong and Tarik Benmarhnia, all of UC San Diego.
This research study was funded, in part, by the National Institutes of Health (1R01CA234539) and the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program of the University of California Office of the President (28IR-0066).

At the very first yearly follow up, 9.4% of these developed smokers had given up. Now considered “previous cigarette smokers,” 62.9% of these individuals stayed tobacco totally free, while 37.1% had actually switched to another form of tobacco use. Of these current smokers who changed to another product, 22.8% used e-cigarettes, with 17.6% of switchers utilizing e-cigarettes daily.
” This is the very first study to take a deep look at whether switching to a less harmful nicotine source can be kept over time without relapsing to cigarette smoking,” said Pierce. “If switching to e-cigarettes was a viable way to quit cigarette smoking, then those who switched to e-cigarettes must have much lower regression rates to cigarette smoking cigarettes.

Cigarette smokers who gave up smoking cigarettes however substitute e-cigarettes, or other tobacco product, are more most likely to relapse.
The United States Centers for Illness Control and Prevention have suggested that smokers who are unable to quit smoking may benefit by switching from cigarette smoking to vaping e-cigarettes if they change totally and are able to avoid relapsing to smoking.