E-cigarettes are independent risk factor for respiratory disease, study finds

Use of electronic cigarettes appears to be an independent risk factor for respiratory disease in addition to tobacco smoking, according to the first population based long term analysis to investigate the association.1

“We found that for e-cigarette users the odds of developing lung disease increased by about a third, even after controlling for their tobacco use and their clinical and demographic information,” said the lead author Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “We concluded that e-cigarettes are harmful on their own, and the effects are independent of smoking conventional tobacco,” he added.

The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, analysed …