E-cigarettes, Aldehydes and Endothelial Dysfunction

What are the cardiovascular effects of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin (PG:VG) and saturated aldehydes used in electronic cigarettes? Guest Editor Loren Wold (The Ohio State University) interviews senior author Daniel Conklin (University of Louisville) and expert Mark Olfert (West Virginia University) about the latest study by Jin et al., which investigated the base liquid in E-cigarettes in the absence of nicotine and flavorings. Conklin and co-authors exposed male and female mice to the individual components of the E-cigarette aerosol cloud (PG:VG-derived aerosol, formaldehyde gas, acetaldehyde gas) and compared their results to filtered air. The authors found mice exposed to PG:VG and formaldehyde gas showed increased endothelial dysfunction, a key biomarker of chronic cardiovascular disease risk. The authors also found that female mice were more sensitive to each of the exposure conditions than male counterparts. Does this indicate that female mice are a sensitive and useful model for exposure to environmental inhalants? Do the authors think that heat-not-burn E-cigarettes may be an alternative to E-cigs using PG:VG base liquid? Listen as our experts discuss where we go from here.

 

Lexiao Jin, Jordan Lynch, Andre Richardson, Pawel Lorkiewicz, Shweta Srivastava, Whitney Theis, Gregg Shirk, Alexis Hand, Aruni Bhatnagar, Sanjay Srivastava, Daniel J. Conklin Electronic Cigarette Solvents, Pulmonary Irritation and Endothelial Dysfunction:Role of Acetaldehyde and Formaldehyde Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol, published February 5, 2021. DOI: doi.org/10.1152/ajpheart.00878.2020