Think twice before taking a drag from your friend’s vape New McGill study shows that even low-level “JUULing” harms your lungs

Raymond Tu Contributor

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In an interview with The McGill Tribune , Carolyn Baglole, associate professor in the Departments of Experimental Medicine and Pharmacology & Therapeutics and director of the McGill Research Centre for Cannabis, explained her rationale behind studying vaping.

“There is such little information on the health effects, particularly in the lungs, of these products,” Baglole said. “I do this work in the hope of filling in a major knowledge gap, given how common e-cigarette use is now.”

In a recent study published in The FASEB Journal , Baglole’s lab comprehensively profiled what happens in the lungs in response to low, but prolonged exposure to e-cigarettes. The study used eight to 12-week-old mice as test subjects. The control group was exposed to typical room air, while the test group was exposed to low levels of commercially available mango-flavoured JUUL vapour every day for four weeks.

The researchers found that there was an increased number of inflammation-related immune cells called neutrophils and lymphocytes present in the lungs of test mice. There were also a number of changes in mRNA and protein expression, especially those related to immune function and