Cells vs. Cinnamon
After a person vapes, e-liquid chemicals could pass through the walls of small vessels in the lungs to enter the blood, says Thivanka Muthumalage. He’s a researcher in Rahman’s lab.
Rahman’s team wanted to know what would happen when these chemicals encountered blood cells. In one set of tests, the researchers exposed blood cells directly to the flavorings. They chose a type of white blood cell called a macrophage (MAK-roh-fayj). These cells are part of the immune system, which fights disease. Macrophages hunt down and “eat” particles that shouldn’t be in the blood stream. Those foreign particles could be germs or other things that might make people sick.
The team used doses of flavoring chemicals similar to what are in the e-liquids that you can buy at a store, says Muthumalage. The doses in the experiment might even have been lower than what people would vape.
To measure how toxic each chemical was, the researchers looked for signs of stress in the cells, or even cell death. A number of e-liquid flavoring chemicals caused high levels of cell stress or death. Those included flavorings that taste buttery (these contain the chemicals pentanedione and acetoin). They also included flavorings that taste like vanilla (O-vanillin), cotton candy, caramel (maltol) and cinnamon (cinnamaldehyde).
That last one, cinnamaldehyde (Sih-nuh-MAAL-duh-hide), killed the most cells. And that’s bad. Dead immune cells can’t fight infection, explains Muthumalage.
His team’s findings are backed up by a study in the March 27 PLOS Biology. Researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill tested the effects of 148 e-liquids on human cells. When exposed to vapors of some e-liquid flavors, it showed, fewer of these cells grew. The worst culprits? Cinnamaldehyde and vanillin.
Read More Here: https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/e-cigarettes-dont-need-nicotine-be-toxic