Specific chemicals in the berry vapes paralyzed immune cells in the lungs responsible for clearing out harmful particles, leaving the body more vulnerable to respiratory infections.
RT’s Three Key Takeaways:
- Berry Vape Flavors Impair Lung Immunity: Specific chemicals in berry-flavored vapes were found to paralyze immune cells in the lungs, increasing vulnerability to respiratory infections.
- Flavored Vaping Heightens Health Risks: While all vaping can harm lung health, this study adds evidence that added flavors may intensify the dangers by further weakening lung defenses.
- Ongoing Research Needed for Human Impact: Researchers stress the need for further studies to identify the compounds in berry flavors that impair immunity and to assess if these effects occur in humans as they did in mice.
Berry-flavored vapes can weaken the lungs’ natural defenses, making it harder for the body to fight off infections, new research suggests.
The study compared the effects of flavored e-cigarettes to those of unflavored ones. While previous research has shown that all forms of vaping can be harmful, the scholars say this study adds to a mounting body of evidence demonstrating how added flavorings to vaping solutions can exacerbate the dangers.
Inspired by a series of reported lung injury cases in teenagers in 2019, McGill assistant professor Ajitha Thanabalasuriar, PhD, in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, in collaboration with Erika Penz, MD, from the University of Saskatchewan, exposed mice to e-cigarette vapor over several days and used a live imaging technique to observe their lung immune cells in real time.
Paralzying Immune Cells
The study, published in PNAS, showed that specific chemicals in the berry vapes paralyze immune cells in the lungs responsible for clearing out harmful particles, leaving the body more vulnerable to respiratory infections. The unflavored ones did not have that effect.
“We need to be careful about the types of flavors that we’re including in these products. They can have detrimental effects. I think that’s really the take-home message, especially some of these vaping products that are marketed for kids—the way they’re sold, the type of containers they are sold in—it’s very colorful, it’s really attractive to children, and this can be a really bad thing for our future,” she says in a release.
More work is needed to pinpoint the specific compounds in berry-flavored vapes responsible for impairing immune cells and to confirm whether the effects observed in mice also occur in humans, she notes.
While smoking rates are declining, more than one in five young adults ages 18 to 24 vape in Quebec, according to provincial data.
The study was funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research, the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity, and the Canadian Research Chair research allowance.
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