It’s clear that vaping can seriously wreck your lungs, especially in light of the alarming rise in hospitalizations for e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury (EVALI) in 2019. Beyond acute lung injury, though, experts I previously interviewed for Mic worry that vapes, not unlike regular cigarettes, could cause a plethora of long-term harms. A new study suggests that this may include fragile bones — even in young adults, according to a EurekAlert press release.
Dayawa D. Agoons of the Department of Medicine at UPMC Pinaccle in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, decided to embark on the study when he saw a patient after she’d undergone surgery to repair a femoral neck fracture, according the press release. “She was a smoker and used e-cigarettes as an aid to quit smoking,” he said. “I realized there was a knowledge gap in the literature on the potential relationship between e-cigarettes.” Although scientists had established a link between smoking combustible cigarettes and osteoporosis — a condition characterized by fragile bones — they had yet to investigate a similar connection between vaping and osteoporosis, per EurekAlert.
