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Chronically elevated inflammation is a contributing factor in the development and progression of chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease. Biomarker studies suggest that chronic e-cigarette use is associated with elevated circulating inflammatory cytokines and overall vascular inflammation. However, few studies have examined measures of immune cell activity in e-cigarette users. We hypothesized that healthy young adults (18-24 years) who chronically (history of use ≥6 months) and exclusively use e-cigarettes (EC) would have higher plasma concentrations of the inflammatory cytokine TNFα compared to healthy controls (HC), and that peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) isolated from EC would release more TNFα when stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) compared to PBMC isolated from HC. 9 HC (20±2 years) and 10 EC (20±1 years; 4±2 years of e-cigarette use) participated in 1 study visit in which we collected 20mL of whole blood via venipuncture and isolated plasma and PBMC. PBMC were incubated in RPMI and 10% FBS with or without 1mg/mL LPS (37°C, 5% CO 2 ). PBMC supernatants were collected at 4 and 24 hours and TNFα concentrations were quantified in plasma and supernatant samples via ELISA. EC had greater plasma TNFα concentrations compared to HC (HC: 1.7±1.5 vs. EC: 3.1±2.7 pg/mL; p=0.03). PBMC supernatants from EC had elevated TNFα following 4 (HC: 28.0±16.9 vs. EC: 52.1±46.5 pg/mL; p=0.04) and 24 (HC: 87.7±71.6 vs. EC: 178.9±121.0 pg/mL; p=0.04) hours of LPS stimulation compared to HC. There were no group of time differences in TNFα in supernatants from unstimulated PBMC (all p>0.05). These data agree with prior findings that chronic e-cigarette use is associated with elevated circulating inflammatory cytokines and suggest that mononuclear cells of e-cigarette users have a greater cytokine response to inflammatory stimuli. NIEHS/NIH P30 ES005605. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.
Wetzel et al. (Wed,) studied this question.