New study suggests vaping damages the immune system

They were given one puff per minute, with about three hours in between each session – a routine designed to mimic the habits of light and moderate Juul users.

There were also two control groups – to help determine if it really was Juul causing the changes – who were exposed to either a control liquid or standard room air.

‘We were quite surprised to see so many different changes,’ says Baglole. ‘Even if we don’t see massive damage to the lungs, we see pretty substantial changes that could indicate damage in the future.’

As she explains, supporting what scarce research has already been done, the results demonstrate that even low, repeated exposure to vape smoke can impact the lungs at a cellular and molecular level, meaning the smoke changes how information is ‘read’ from DNA.

This, Baglole adds, set off significantly more alarm bells than she and her team expected – but it wasn’t even the study’s biggest discovery.

As it reveals, there was an increase in the mice’s lung neutrophils (white blood cells that fight off infection), too.

This suggests that vaping could be causing a chain reaction that scientists can’t see, where smoke triggers an alarm signal to the body, asking the immune system forces for help against potential danger.

Simply put, it’s thought that vaping makes the body more vulnerable to developing inflammatory or autoimmune diseases – like pulmonary fibrosis or lupus – and puts vapers at a higher risk of chronic lung disease or certain lung cancers.

‘Any change in the immune state of a lung is highly concerning because it tells you that the lung is going to respond differently when it has other challenges,’ says Laura Crotty Alexander, an expert in pulmonology who’s own experiments imply that if a human who vapes were to get bacterial pneumonia, they’d likely respond more severely than someone who doesn’t vape.

‘I still think vaping is the lesser of two evils, but it’s more evil than I thought it would be,’ she concludes.