A study claiming the fitness of young people who vape is “just as bad as smokers of the same age” cannot be trusted, leading academics have said.
The report by a team at Manchester Metropolitan University claims to challenge a body of evidence showing that vaping is a healthier alternative to smoking.
Its findings were presented last week at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Vienna, Austria, by lead author Dr Azmy Faisal.
Information from a short press release was then widely used by media publications around the world under sensational headlines such as “Vaping damages young people’s lungs as much as smoking, study suggests.”
Major concerns
However, leading academics have expressed major concerns that the report was shared to the media without yet having been published in a scientific journal or being peer reviewed.
They also point to fundamental issues in the study’s methods and the way the results were presented, as well as a lack of available information.
The researchers studied only 60 people in their 20s, all of whom were said to have normal lung function. A third of the participants were classed as long-term smokers, a third as long-term vapers, and a third as neither smokers or vapers.
To study their heart, lungs, and muscles’ responses to increasingly difficult exercise, participants were asked to pedal at harder and harder levels on a static bike until they reached exhaustion.
“The smokers and the vapers had measurably excess breathing while using the exercise bikes. They found it harder to breathe, their muscles became more fatigued, and they were less fit overall,” Faisal said.
She concluded: “In this regard, our research indicated that vaping is no better than smoking.”
The limitations of unpublished research
But Rachel Richardson, manager at the methods support unit at global health network Cochrane, said there are several reasons to be cautious about the findings of the study and the way the press release was phrased.
She said: “Firstly, this is unpublished research, and so independent scientists have not yet scrutinised the methods and the results. Peer review is a crucial part of the scientific process and it is a major concern that these findings are being widely disseminated without this scrutiny.”
Richardson also said that, based on the information made available, the researchers have not proven that vaping actually causes reduced fitness levels in young people.
She said: “Secondly, the fact that the study authors seem to have found an association between performance in exercise testing and vaping in young people cannot be interpreted to mean that vaping causes a reduced capacity for exercise.”
Richardson said there could be many other reasons for this finding, for example, people who vape may exercise less regularly than people who do not.
Results not up to date
She also criticises the researchers for publicising their data before it was complete.
“Thirdly, the results presented in the press release are not up to date. The authors now have more data from an additional 15 participants and this will be presented at the conference,” she said.
Too little information
Professor Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics at The Open University, said that not enough information on the study was made available to judge its accuracy.
He said: “It’s always frustrating to try to judge the quality of a research study, being presented at a conference, on the basis of so little information. We have a fairly brief press release, a very brief summary (abstract) of the work.”
McConway adds that a quote in the press release from Dr Filippos Filippidis of Imperial College, who was not involved in the research, begins with the important point that it’s hard, in a study like this, to know what is actually causing the differences between the groups of young people in response to testing during exercise.
“There are good reasons for that doubt,” he said.
He notes that the groups (tobacco smokers, vapers, non-smokers) would have differed in many ways apart from whether they smoked, vaped or did neither.
He said: “.. it remains possible that the observed differences in response to exercise are actually caused, not by whether they smoke or vape, but by some other difference, perhaps in lifestyle.
“It could even be that cause and effect goes in a different direction altogether. Maybe some people chose not to use tobacco or vapes because they were more involved in sport and exercise, and it’s this previous involvement in sport that is the cause of their better physiological response to exercise, rather than the fact that they chose not to smoke or vape.
“Or it could indeed be that the differences in response to exercise are in fact caused by the smoking or vaping. The issue is that we just can’t tell, at any rate on the basis of the information available.”
