MOSCOW, November 22The mechanism of the effect of e-liquid vapors for electronic cigarettes on the lungs of mammals was studied by SSU scientists together with colleagues from TSU. According to the researchers, the identified effects confirmed the possibility of medical use of vapes based on glycerin and propylene glycol to increase the contrast of the optical image of lung tissue. The results are presented in Diagnostics.
As explained at the university, to conduct experiments on laboratory rats, a “passive vaping” chamber was used, where the animals were forced to breathe mixtures of propylene glycol and glycerin.
«»When “In a single session of inhaling e-liquid vapor, temporary and reversible changes in the structure of lung tissue occur, which become optically more transparent,” said Associate Professor of the Department of Optics and Biophotonics at the Institute of Physics of Saratov State University named after N.G. Chernyshevsky (SSU) Irina Yanina.
She explained that histological examination (dissection of tissue into thin layers) of the samples revealed areas of emphysematous alveolar dilatation, thickening of the alveolar septa and plasma infiltration. At the same time, an increase in the packing density of the lung tissue structure provided a higher contrast of optical coherence tomography images compared to its natural state.
“The developed optical clearing protocols using e-liquid vapors can be used in the future for lung studies using endoscopic optical coherence tomography and other methods of endoscopic optical spectroscopy and visualization,” said Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of the SSU Scientific Medical Center Valery Tuchin.< br />
The university emphasized that at the moment the long-term consequences of inhaling e-liquid vapors, consisting of glycerin and propylene glycol in different proportions, have not been studied sufficiently fully, so it is still difficult to establish the harm to health from this method of smoking. However, it is absolutely clear that if a single use of a smoking mixture leads to reversible changes in optical and, accordingly, structural changes, then for long-term vaping one should expect irreversible pathological changes in the lung tissue.
The work was carried out as part of an interuniversity research team together with scientists from Tomsk State University.
In the future, the research team intends to study the prolonged effect of inhaling liquid vapor from electronic cigarettes by expanding the instrument base. The direction is included in the strategic project of SSU «Technologies of personalized medicine» of the federal program «Priority 2030» of the national project «Science and Universities».