According to new research by UC Davis, cigarette smoke has a greater impact on airway health than marijuana smoke or vaping. Medical Xpress said researchers found that tobacco smoke, in particular, increased inflammation and oxidative stress. Their paper was published in Respiratory Research.
“We didn’t measure the chemicals that come out of cigarettes or marijuana, we measured the responses of the airway epithelial cells, as well as some systemic responses,” said pulmonologist Nicholas Kenyon, director of the UC Davis Asthma Network and co-senior author on the study. “The metabolites tell us quite a bit about oxidative stress and inflammation.”
The study recruited 254 participants, with 132 using a tobacco or marijuana product, sometimes both. The researchers collected exhaled breath condensate, which is the fog people see when they breathe on a mirror.
“From there, the team used mass spectrometry to analyze the oxylipin content in the collected condensate,” wrote Medical Xpress. “Oxylipins are lipid-based signaling molecules often associated with inflammation and oxidative stress. The researchers found these metabolites were significantly upregulated in tobacco smokers, meaning they increased in activity. The oxylipin responses were less dramatic in participants who vaped tobacco products. For marijuana smokers, the oxylipin profiles were much closer (but not identical) to non-users.”
These findings diverge from earlier cell culture studies, which showed that both tobacco and marijuana smoke generate significant oxidative stress and inflammation. The current study is the first of its kind with humans.
“Cigarettes upregulate these inflammatory fatty acids, but we didn’t see that nearly as much with marijuana and marijuana products,” said Kenyon. “When we look at the signatures from the marijuana smokers, they look closer to non-users and non-smokers than the tobacco smokers, and that was a surprise to us.”
