Some people might experience an intense reaction to the fluid in e-cigarettes, British doctors have warned.
The conclusion came after then 16-year old Ewan Fisher had respiratory failures after week-long suffering from what was initially thought to be an asthma attack.
In 2017, the boy experienced fever, persistent cough, and difficulty in breathing. And the doctor's diagnosis revealed that he has severely inflamed air sacs and airways, or a condition called hypersensitivity pneumonitis.
It is an "exaggerated immune response" to a chemical found in e-cigarette fluid, the doctors reported. They were able to determine it by performing a skin reactivity test on the boy's skin with a small amount of vaping fluid.
The doctors also said that the boy developed antibodies to one of the two vaping liquids he used few months after he recovered, which increased the possibility of their initial hypothesis.
The two important lessons on these incidents are: always consider the possible effect of e-cigarette on people with rare respiratory illnesses, and the public health is being placed at risk by claiming e-cigarettes are much safer than tobacco, the doctors wrote
The study was published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.
READ: Toxic Chemical Fumes Are The Suspects of Vaping-Associated Injuries
There's a vaping-related illness outbreak in the US...
Earlier this month, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there were at least 2,100 cases of vaping-related lung injury. At least 40 of these patients have died.
The federal disease center is now working with the US Food and Drug Administration and local health departments.
The FDA tested samples of vaping products and found out that most of these contain THC. And about 86% of the patients previously used THC products. Then, 64% used nicotine products when they vape, while another 11% used nicotine exclusively.
It is still unknown what causes the outbreak. But CDC claimed, noticed that many patients got their products from street transactions or from family or friends, rather than from certified vaping stores.
CDC is also investigating if there are any risk factors that led to this crisis.
READ: E-Cigarette Has Caused Lung Cancer To Mice
...but there is none reported in the UK.
While some stores in the US are removing vaping products as an action against this incident, the United Kingdom does not seem to be encountering the same outbreak.
And people seem to be more accepting there. In fact, Public Health England reported that yearly, at least 20,000 people are successfully able to quit smoking after using vape as a cessation tool. The same agency reported that vaping is 95% less harmful than combustible cigarettes.
In response to the incident of Fisher, the director of the UK Centre for Tobacco & Alcohol Studies, John Britton, claimed that this is just a severe allergy incident. And due to the very small number of reported incidents globally, he also concluded that this is very rare.
Britton also disagreed with the authors' conclusion that we are putting the public health at peril by claiming vaping is safer than tobacco. Rare conditions like this should be recognized, but the risk is quite low when compared to how smoking kills half of the long-term smokers, he added.