Risks of Smoking During the 3:22 Pandemic
(CNN Spanish) - A study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health indicates that young people who smoke electronic cigarettes (or vape) are more likely to contract coronavirus and have symptoms.
In this episode, Dr. Elmer Huerta tells us about the findings of researchers at Stanford and Southern California Universities regarding this study.
You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform, or read the transcript below.
Hello, I am Dr. Elmer Huerta and this is your daily dose of information about the new coronavirus, information that we hope will be useful to take care of your health and that of your family. Today we will see that adolescents and young people in general who smoke electronic cigarettes, or conventional tobacco, have a high risk of becoming infected with the new coronavirus and of presenting symptoms of the disease.
One of the efforts being made to fight the pandemic around the world is to try to determine what characteristics of people will be able to predict their risk of becoming infected and, after becoming infected, of becoming complicated by the disease.
In this sense, from the first study of more than 72,000 people in China it was known that the risk of complications was higher in people over 70 years of age with hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and chronic respiratory diseases.
Later obesity was added to the list, a condition that currently constitutes, especially in the Western world, one of the main risk factors for complications and even death.
In this sense, a recent publication of the Journal of Adolescent Health offers us a new risk group for becoming infected and presenting symptoms of covid-19: adolescents and other young people who smoke cigarettes, whether they are electronic or regular tobacco.
Researchers from Stanford and Southern California Universities conducted an online survey with a representative sample of the United States population, studying people ages 13 to 24, between May 6 and 14.
The objective of the study was to know the relationship between smoking electronic cigarettes or tobacco and the risk of becoming infected with the new coronavirus or presenting symptoms related to the disease.
For that, the participants answered questions about their history of using e-cigarettes or smoking tobacco. They were also asked if they had symptoms and if they had been tested for covid-19.
A total of 4,351 participants from all 50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia in the United States completed the online survey, and the results indicated that young people who used e-cigarettes were five to seven times more likely to be infected than young people. that they did not use this type of cigarettes.
On the other hand, young people who - in the previous 30 days - had smoked both tobacco and electronic cigarettes were almost five times more likely to experience symptoms of COVID-19 such as cough, fever, tiredness and shortness of breath, compared to young people they never smoked.
It is possible that the development of these symptoms then made these young people, depending on the type of cigarette they used, between 2.6 and 9 times more likely to have been tested for covid-19.
Finally, among young people who were tested for COVID-19, those who once used e-cigarettes but not tobacco were five times more likely to be diagnosed than non-users.
This study then shows that adolescents and young people who use electronic cigarettes or tobacco are at higher risk of becoming infected, of having more diagnostic tests and of presenting more symptoms caused by the disease. And that those who smoke electronic cigarettes but not tobacco, have a higher risk of suffering from the disease.
Researchers conclude that adolescents and young adults need to know that if they use e-cigarettes, they are likely - by damaging their lungs - to be at immediate risk for COVID-19.
Send me your questions on Twitter, we will try to answer them in our next episodes. You can find me at @DrHuerta.
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If you have any questions you can send them to Dr. Elmer Huerta via Twitter. You can also head over to CNNE.com/coronaviruspodcast for all episodes of our “Coronavirus: Reality vs. Reality” podcast. fiction".
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