Scientific
evidence grows for e-cigarettes as quit-smoking aids
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[September 14, 2016]
By Kate Kelland
LONDON (Reuters) - Electronic cigarettes
may have helped about 18,000 people in England to give up smoking last
year and there is no evidence of any serious side effects associated
with their use for up to two years, according to studies published on
Tuesday.
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Researchers at University College London (UCL) analyzed the latest
data on smoking and quitting in England – including details on
smokers who worked with the health-worker devised Stop Smoking
Services to set a quit date.
While they found no direct evidence that e-cigarettes prompted more
people to make the decision to try and quit, the team did find that
as more people used e-cigarettes, more people also successfully
stopped smoking.
In a separate scientific analysis also published on Tuesday,
researchers at the Cochrane Review found that the overall weight of
evidence on e-cigarettes suggests they can help people stop smoking
and have no serious side-effects.
E-cigarettes, which heat nicotine-laced liquid into vapor, have
rapidly grown into a global market for "vaping" products that was
estimated at around $7 billion in 2015.
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Unlike nicotine chewing gum and patches, they mimic the experience
of cigarette smoking because they are hand-held and generate a
smoke-like vapor.
Tobacco smoking kills half of all those who indulge, plus at least
another 600,000 non-smokers a year via second-hand smoke. This makes
it the world's biggest preventable killer, with a predicted death
toll of a billion by the end of the century, according to the World
Health Organization (WHO).
Many public health specialists think e-cigarettes, or vapes, which
do not contain tobacco, are a lower-risk alternative to smoking, but
some question their long-term safety.
Experts estimate that around 2.8 million people in the UK use
e-cigarettes and they have become the nation's most popular smoking
cessation aid.
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"England is sometimes singled out as being too positive in its
attitude to e-cigarettes," said Robert West, a professor at UCL's
Health Behaviour Research Centre who co-led the study and published
it in the BMJ British Medical Journal.
"These data suggest that our relatively liberal regulation of
e-cigarettes is probably justified."
In the second analysis, a review published by the Cochrane Library,
researchers also found e-cigarettes may help people quit but said
there is not yet enough evidence from the best type of studies -
randomized controlled trials - to be sure.
Of the studies that looked at side effects and were reviewed by the
Cochrane team, none found any serious concerns of using e-cigarettes
for up to two years. Among non-serious side-effects, throat and
mouth irritation were most common.
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