E-cigarettes may harm babies brain development, study warns

New research suggests that e-cigarette vapour may be as damaging as tobacco smoke to the nervous systems of the foetus or newborn infants.

The early findings, based on studies of mice, show that exposure to volatile chemicals from the devices disrupts the activity of thousands of genes in the developing frontal cortex, the brain region responsible for higher mental functions.

Analysis of the altered gene activity patterns indicated that they could lead to reductions in learning, memory and co-ordination, and increases in hyperactive behaviour. These are the sort of neurological effects seen in children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy and who are known to be at risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and learning difficulties.

The health damage caused by smoking has been in the news in the region recently following the launch of a new campaign.

It has been set up to persuade the one-in-five adults in the region still smoking to give up.

Yorkshire has the highest adult smoking rates in the country with around 20 per cent of people still smoking.

Now councils across the region 
are backing the television and online campaign which aims to raise awareness that smoking is directly linked to 16 different cancers.

The new research on the effects of e-cigarettes is being led by Prof Judith Zelikoff from new York University.

She said: “This is ground-breaking research. What it shows is that there is certainly some concern over the safety of e-cigarettes, particularly in relation to pregnant women or young infants.

“There are potential dangers revealed by these studies indicating a possible impact to the unborn child that may be seen at birth but may occur later in the life of the child.

“Women may be turning to these products as an alternative because they think they’re safe. Well, they’re not.”

Colleague Dana Lauterstein, a PhD student at the university who did much of the work, added: “Most people view e-cigarettes as a safe way to smoke. For women who are pregnant, this could be dangerous. They could unwittingly be endangering their child.”

Prof Zelikoff’s team started out expecting to see effects from nicotine, which previous research has suggested may have an impact on brain development.

The whole point of e-cigarettes is that they deliver a dose of nicotine minus the highly damaging cocktail of other chemicals found in tobacco.

For this reason they have been touted as a “healthier” alternative for smoker. Recent studies have challenged the view that apart from its addictive properties, nicotine on its own is harmless.

And the new research shows that other e-cigarette chemicals besides nicotine have an even bigger effect on developing nervous systems. In the gene activity study, mice exposed to e-cigarette vapour with its nicotine removed experienced the largest number of changes, with some genes being boosted and others suppressed. Females were more affected than males.

Prof Zelikoff said: “That was really surprising. We were shocked.

“But what people don’t realise is that even without nicotine there are many things that are given off when you heat up and vapourise these products.”