Appolonia Adeyemi 
Researchers in the United States have found that daily use of pod-based e-cigarettesalterstheinflammatory state across multiple organ systems, including the brain, heart, lungs and colon. The result of the new study, published in the journal ‘eLife,’ is the first to assess JUUL devices and their flavorants in a multi-organ fashion.
“These pod-based e-cigarettes have only become popular in the last five or so years, so we don’t know much about their long-term effects on health,” said senior study author Laura Crotty Alexander, MD, associate professor of medicine at University of Carlifonia (UC) San Diego School of Medicine and section chief of Pulmonary Critical Care at Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System. Crotty Alexander’s team focused on the current most prominent e-cigarette brand, JUUL, and its most popular flavours: mint and mango. To model chronic e-cigarette use, young adult mice were exposed to flavored JUUL aerosols three times a day for three months.
Researchers then looked for signs of inflammation across the body. Authors saw the most striking effects in the brain, where several inflammatory markers were elevated. Additional changes in neuroinflammatory gene expression were noted in the nucleus accumbens, a brain region critical for motivation and reward-processing, reported the ‘Medical Xpress’.