Tobacco Research / 30.06.2025
Understanding the Vaping Landscape: What Research Still Needs to Uncover
Editor's note: Tobacco in any form is harmful to your health. Please discuss your use of tobacco products, including vaping, with your health care provider.
The popularity of vaping products has surged in recent years, with flavored disposable vapes especially dominating shelves and online marketplaces. While these products are often marketed as smoother, more palatable alternatives to traditional cigarettes, the long-term health effects remain unclear. As researchers work to better understand the impact of vaping on respiratory and cardiovascular health, there’s growing pressure to also examine the behavioral and chemical patterns surrounding use.
Response: Cigarette smoking is one of the well-established causes of periodontitis, but the effect of using electronic cigarettes (e-cig), especially its long-term impact on periodontal health, is not yet clearly understood. Considering the increased popularity of e-cig use, especially among teenagers and young adults, and the known effect of high nicotine concentration in e-cigarette products, we conducted this clinical research to see if there were differences in periodontal health between e-cig users, traditional smokers, and nonsmokers. The study consisted of two visits, 6 months apart, where measures of oral and periodontal health were obtained.
Our data showed significantly greater clinical attachment loss in the e-cigarette users and cigarette smokers than in the non-smokers at both study visits. In only e-cigarette users, we observed an over 0.2 mm average increase in the clinical attachment loss after 6 months. 
Response: The background for this study involves the associations of household rules and parental awareness with youth tobacco use using data from the Population Assessment Tobacco and Health Study. Health concerns regarding non-cigarette tobacco products, specifically e-cigarettes, have been on the rise. We wanted to explore whether parents are up to date with the trends of popular tobacco products today and what role they may play in youth tobacco cessation and prevention.
The main findings of the study revealed that parents less often suspected their children’s tobacco use if their children reported using only e-cigarettes, and other non-cigarette tobacco products, when compared with cigarettes. Additionally, we found that youth who agreed with their parents that their home has strict rules for tobacco use were less likely to initiate of tobacco use compared to youth who had different understanding of the rules from their parents or youth from households with more permissive household rules. 
