Vaping Linked to Higher Risk of Heart Failure: Daily Dose

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Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.

Last week, we reported on findings from a study presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 73rd Annual Scientific Session, held April 6-8, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia.

The study

Researchers examined the association between e-cigarette use and heart failure (HF). They used data from surveys and electronic health records (EHR) in the All of Us Research Program, a large national study of US adults sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Participants with a baseline EHR diagnosis of HF were excluded. Data on e-cigarette use was obtained from participants using the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health-styled questions.

The findings

A total of 175 667 participants (mean age, 52 years; 60.5% women) were included in the cohort, of which 3242 developed HF within a median follow-up time of 45 months.

Compared to never users, researchers observed that ever users of e-cigarettes had an increased risk of incident HF (aHR -1.19, 95% CI 1.06-1.35) in the fully adjusted model.

When researchers broke the data down by type of HF, they found that the increased risk associated with e-cigarette use was statistically significant for HF with preserved ejection fraction (aHR -1.21, 95% CI 1.01-1.47), but not for HF with reduced ejection fraction (aHR -1.11, 95% CI 0.90-1.37). There was no evidence that participants’ age, sex, or smoking status modified the relationship between e-cigarette use and HF.

Authors' comment

"More research is needed corroborate these findings, to enable clinicians provide the public with high quality information on the health implications of electronic nicotine product use and to guide policies."

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