The Vaping-Related Lung Disease Outbreak May Be Coming to an End

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced Friday with new confidence that vitamin E acetate seems to be largely to blame for the vaping-related lung illness outbreak that swept the country—at the same time it announced the outbreak seems to be approaching its end. As of the CDC’s latest update, 2,506 people in the U.S. and its territories have been hospitalized for “e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury” (EVALI), and 54 people have died. Most of these cases seem to have occurred in people who used products containing the marijuana compound THC, the majority purchased from black-market sources. Products spiked with the oily additive vitamin E acetate, which is sometimes used to stretch a product’s THC content, have been seen as the leading culprit. Building upon prior findings, CDC researchers published a report about vitamin E acetate in the New England Journal of Medicine Friday. Researchers tested lung fluid samples from 51 patients with EVALI from 16 states, as well as from a control group of 99 healthy subjects, some of whom smoked or vaped. They found vitamin E acetate in 48 of the 51 samples from EVALI patients, and in none of the healthy control samples. The fact that EVALI patients showing signs of vitamin E acetate exposure came from 16 different states suggests one supplier or dealer is not to blame for the injuries, CDC Principal Deputy Director Dr. Anne Schuchat said on a call with reporters Friday. It...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized E-Cigarettes embargoed study public health Source Type: news