Trial to investigate how e-cigs affect smoking

11 May 2016

Trial to investigate how e-cigs affect smoking

Some have touted e-cigarettes as a game-changing innovation that will dramatically help reduce smoking. Others argue that they will do just the opposite – putting at risk decades of tobacco control achievements.

A new trial funded by a Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) feasibility study grant will collect real-time data from e-cigarette users over two months using a novel ‘smart’ e-cigarette to provide new insights into the debate.

The smart e-cigarettes allow the collection of unprecedented real-time data about e-cigarette usage, including puff duration and nicotine intake, and the frequency and intensity of use.

Microprocessor-controlled vaporizers in the smart e-cigarettes will capture and record users’ behaviour on either an Android or iOS device using Bluetooth technology, while a GPS tracker monitors where participants have used them. The smart e-cigarettes will be used together with an app-based questionnaire that collects information about the participants’ use of smoked tobacco.

E-cigarettes do not involve tobacco combustion and so reduce – but not eliminate – exposure to toxins produced by smoked tobacco.

Lead researcher, Marketing Professor Janet Hoek from the University of Otago, Dunedin, says the use of smart e-cigarettes will help to examine currently unanswered questions about whether, and over what timeframe, people transition from smoking tobacco to using e-cigarettes, and how e-cigarette use evolves over time.

“While there is general agreement that e-cigarettes are safer than combustible tobacco, smokers will only achieve substantial risk reductions if they switch completely from smoking to using e-cigarettes,” says Professor Hoek.

“Our current understanding of the transition between smoking and e-cigarette use is poor, and we lack the data needed to assess whether dual use is a transitional behaviour that supports smoking cessation, or a sustained behaviour pattern that promotes continued tobacco use.”

The findings from this study are intended to inform a larger study that will include testing the potential of e-cigarettes to help achieve New Zealand’s smokefree 2025 goal.

HRC Chief Executive Professor Kath McPherson says alternative forms of delivering nicotine such as e-cigarettes have become very popular, even in New Zealand where no nicotine-delivering e-cigarettes are currently approved for use as aids to stop smoking (importation for personal use is permitted).

“E-cigarettes are a topic of hot debate both here and internationally. Research such as this will help us build up the evidence that we need to determine if e-cigarettes actually do help people quit smoking. The outcomes should be of great interest to the many other countries that are currently debating e-cigarette policy guidelines.”

This year the HRC has awarded seven feasibility study grants worth a combined total of $1.05 million. Feasibility study grants are designed for where there is strong evidence to justify a larger study, but where critical practical information is needed to make the potential study clearly fundable.

ENDS

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