Nicotine - Retracted Studies, Papers, and Articles: Difference between revisions

==Respiratory==

*Given all these shortcomings (opaqueness, unrealistic airflow and nicotine, likely overexposure of mice), the results of this study are not reliable to assess potential harms from exposure to e-cigarette aerosol. (Sussman)

*Aslaner DM, Alghothani O, Saldana TA, Ezell KG, Yallourakis MD, MacKenzie DM, Miller RA, Wold LE, Gorr MW. E-cigarette vapor exposure in utero causes long-term pulmonary effects in offspring. Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol. 2022 Dec 1;323(6):L676-L682. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9722245/ doi: 10.1152/ajplung.00233.2022]. Epub 2022 Oct 11. PMID: 36218276; PMCID: PMC9722245.

*"The study by Osei et al. used the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, which contains no information about when participants started to smoke or vape, or when they were diagnosed with any disease. Therefore, it is deficient and unreliable." (Rodu)

*Referring to: Osei AD, Mirbolouk M, Orimoloye OA, Dzaye O, Uddin SMI, Dardari ZA, DeFilippis AP, Bhatnagar A, Blaha MJ. The association between e-cigarette use and asthma among never combustible cigarette smokers: behavioral risk factor surveillance system (BRFSS) 2016 & 2017. BMC Pulm Med. 2019 Oct 16;19(1):180. [https://bmcpulmmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12890-019-0950-3 doi: 10.1186/s12890-019-0950-3]. PMID: 31619218; PMCID: PMC6796489.

*"The study by Osei et al. is deficient and unreliable, because it used the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, which contains no information about when participants started to smoke or vape, or when they were diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)." (Rodu)

*Referring to: Osei, A. D., Mirbolouk, M., Orimoloye, O. A., Dzaye, O., Uddin, S. M. I., Benjamin, E. J., Hall, M.E., DeFilippis, A.P., Bhatnagar, A., Biswal, S.S., Blaha, M. J. (2020). Association Between E-Cigarette Use and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease by Smoking Status: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System 2016 and 2017. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. [https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(19)30479-9/fulltext https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2019.10.014]

*"The study by Wills et al. is deficient and unreliable, because it used the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, which contains no information about when participants started to smoke or vape, or when they were diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)." (Rodu)

*Referring to: Wills TA, Choi K, Pokhrel P, Pagano I. Tests for confounding with cigarette smoking in the association of E-cigarette use with respiratory disorder: 2020 National-Sample Data. Prev Med. 2022 Aug;161:107137. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091743522001864 doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2022.107137]. Epub 2022 Jul 9. PMID: 35820496; PMCID: PMC9328844.

*"Their study used the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, which contains no information about when participants started to smoke or vape, or when they were diagnosed with cardiovascular diseases." (Rodu)

*Referring to: Wills TA, Pagano I, Williams RJ, Tam EK. E-cigarette use and respiratory disorder in an adult sample. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2019 Jan 1;194:363-370. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871618307622 doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2018.10.004]. Epub 2018 Nov 7. PMID: 30472577; PMCID: PMC6312492.

*"The problem with these studies is disentangling the effects of a smoking career (something more complicated than adjusting for current-, former-, never-smoking status) and subsequent vaping behaviour. Also, the relationships are complicated by reverse causation (was the vaping a response to smoking-induced respiratory symptoms?), a hard-to-define counterfactual (has the vaping displaced smoking or displaced abstinence?), and the fact that respiratory damage arises from cumulative exposure and vaping exposures may be adding incremental risk (would the subject have any symptoms if they hadn't smoked first?)." (Bates)

*Referring to: Varella MH, Andrade OA, Shaffer SM, Castro G, Rodriguez P, Barengo NC, Acuna JM. E-cigarette use and respiratory symptoms in residents of the United States: A BRFSS report. PLoS One. 2022 Dec 1;17(12):e0269760. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36454742/ doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269760]. PMID: 36454742; PMCID: PMC9714717.

*"The problem is that vegetable glycerin (glycerol) is not a lipid it is an alcohol. It cannot cause the lipoid pneumonia symptoms mentioned." (Bates)

*"Endogenous lipoid pneumonia from VG (or PG) inhalation is a speculation and implausible...The experience in the US over the past several months clearly shows that the culprit for the acute lung intoxication cases are black market THC oils which were sold as THC oils, not e-cigarette products." (Farsalinos)

*Referring to: Eissenberg T, Maziak W. Are Electronic Cigarette Users at Risk for Lipid-mediated Lung Injury? Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2020 Apr 15;201(8):1012-1013. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31917600/ doi: 10.1164/rccm.201910-2082LE]. PMID: 31917600; PMCID: PMC7159422.

*Multiple Comments:

**"One of the essential criteria of causal inference is that exposure to the cause precedes disease onset. Three of the diseases Glantz studies — COPD, chronic bronchitis and emphysema — take decades to become clinically apparent and would have been present, even though undiagnosed, in many of his cases long before his study began in 2014, and indeed even before e-cigarettes first became available in the US in about 2007. His findings are also flawed by the fact that most vapers have smoked, and since smoking is a strong cause of chronic lung disease, vapers inevitably carry an increased risk of lung disease long after quitting smoking. Glantz claims to have allowed for this statistically but his approach is simplistic: he lacks the detail of lifetime duration and intensity of smoking required. On these grounds alone his conclusion is specious." (Britton)

*Referring to: Bhatta DN, Glantz SA. Association of E-Cigarette Use With Respiratory Disease Among Adults: A Longitudinal Analysis. Am J Prev Med. 2020 Feb;58(2):182-190. [https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(19)30391-5/fulltext doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2019.07.028]. Epub 2019 Dec 16. PMID: 31859175; PMCID: PMC6981012.

*Multiple comments:

**“The comparison between mice breathing vapour and mice breathing air is not statistically significant.  There is no sample size justification and no power calculation.  There is no message to the public here – I suspect these results are just noise.” (Britton)

*Referring to: Tang MS, Wu XR, Lee HW, Xia Y, Deng FM, Moreira AL, Chen LC, Huang WC, Lepor H. Electronic-cigarette smoke induces lung adenocarcinoma and bladder urothelial hyperplasia in mice. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Oct 22;116(43):21727-21731. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31591243/ doi: 10.1073/pnas.1911321116]. Epub 2019 Oct 7. Erratum in: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Nov 5;116(45):22884. PMID: 31591243; PMCID: PMC6815158.

*"​It is literally true that they "find no evidence...", but that is because this study is completely ill-suited to drawing any policy conclusions about e-cigarettes and COPD. Despite hinting at the limitations of cross-sectional data, the authors draw a negative-sounding conclusion without addressing the key question of how respiratory health changes for a given smoker who uses e-cigarettes to quit or cut down once they are ill from smoking or as a way of preventing COPD." (Bates)

*Referring to: Bowler RP, Hansel NN, Jacobson S, Graham Barr R, Make BJ, Han MK, O'Neal WK, Oelsner EC, Casaburi R, Barjaktarevic I, Cooper C, Foreman M, Wise RA, DeMeo DL, Silverman EK, Bailey W, Harrington KF, Woodruff PG, Drummond MB; for COPDGene and SPIROMICS Investigators. Electronic Cigarette Use in US Adults at Risk for or with COPD: Analysis from Two Observational Cohorts. J Gen Intern Med. 2017 Dec;32(12):1315-1322. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28884423/ doi: 10.1007/s11606-017-4150-7]. Epub 2017 Sep 7. PMID: 28884423; PMCID: PMC5698219.

**"Over the past five years, we have published the results of several studies in which diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione levels were measured in various consumer products..."

**"..."hundreds of consumer products (e.g., tea, coffee, citrus juices, butter) contain naturally occurring diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione...several studies have shown that airborne diketones associated with these products are easily detectable..."

*Referring to: Allen JG, Flanigan SS, LeBlanc M, Vallarino J, MacNaughton P, Stewart JH, Christiani DC. Flavoring Chemicals in E-Cigarettes: Diacetyl, 2,3-Pentanedione, and Acetoin in a Sample of 51 Products, Including Fruit-, Candy-, and Cocktail-Flavored E-Cigarettes. Environ Health Perspect. 2016 Jun;124(6):733-9. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26642857/ doi: 10.1289/ehp.1510185]. Epub 2015 Dec 8. PMID: 26642857; PMCID: PMC4892929.

*"The mice were severely overdosed with nicotine, up to the lethal levels for mice, and a huge amount above what any human vaper would get...Regarding the relevance to human health, nicotine poisoning poses normally no risk to vapers or smokers because if nicotine concentrations start to rise above their usual moderate levels, there is an advance warning in the form of nausea which makes people stop nicotine intake long before any dangerous levels can accrue. (Mice in these types of experiments do not have that option)." (Hajek)

*Referring to: Garcia-Arcos I, Geraghty P, Baumlin N, Campos M, Dabo AJ, Jundi B, Cummins N, Eden E, Grosche A, Salathe M, Foronjy R. Chronic electronic cigarette exposure in mice induces features of COPD in a nicotine-dependent manner. Thorax. 2016 Dec;71(12):1119-1129. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27558745/ doi: 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2015-208039]. Epub 2016 Aug 24. PMID: 27558745; PMCID: PMC5136722.

*" In other words, to obtain the same exposure in humans the e-cig user should take 11000 – 13000 puffs per day. Assuming 8 hours of sleep per day, in order to acquire such a high number of puffs e-cig users would need to take 11-13 puffs per minute and thus practically take an e-cig puff with each breath. In conclusion we recommend that the results of the discussed study should be interpreted with caution and that more studies with more realistic levels of e-liquid exposure should be conducted." (Mukhin, Rose)

*Referring to: Sussan TE, Gajghate S, Thimmulappa RK, Ma J, Kim J-H, Sudini K, et al. (2015) Exposure to Electronic Cigarettes Impairs Pulmonary Anti-Bacterial and Anti-Viral Defenses in a Mouse Model. PLoS ONE 10(2): e0116861. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0116861