E-cigarette Use and Subsequent Smoking Frequency Among Adolescents

Introduction:
This text is a study on the relationship between e-cigarette use and subsequent smoking frequency among adolescents. The study aims to determine if e-cigarette use is associated with more frequent cigarette use after initiation and if adolescent cigarette or dual product users transition to exclusive e-cigarette use or nonuse.

Key Points:

* The study pooled data from three prospective cohort studies in California and Connecticut conducted between 2013-2016.
* The study found that e-cigarette use was associated with higher odds of subsequent experimental, infrequent, or frequent cigarette use among baseline never smokers.
* Exclusive cigarette or dual product users were more likely to continue using cigarettes than to transition away from smoking to exclusive e-cigarette use or nonuse.
* The study adjusts for gender, race/ethnicity, grade, and cohort and uses polytomous logistic regression models to evaluate the association between e-cigarette use at baseline and patterns of tobacco use at follow-up.
* The study also assesses whether associations vary across cohorts and performs sensitivity analyses to assess whether effect estimates differ after adjusting for parental education.
* The study includes a total of 6258 participants and follows them for two years.
* The study found that there was no significant difference in the odds of experimental, infrequent, or frequent cigarette use among e-cigarette users.

Main Message:
The study's main message is that e-cigarette use among adolescents is associated with more frequent cigarette use after initiation and that exclusive cigarette or dual product users are more likely to continue using cigarettes than to transition away from smoking to exclusive e-cigarette use or nonuse. The study suggests that tobacco control policy to reduce adolescent use of both e-cigarettes and cigarettes is needed to prevent progression to more frequent tobacco use patterns and reduce combustible cigarette use to lessen the adverse public health impact of e-cigarettes.

Barrington-Trimis, Jessica L., Grace Kong, Adam M. Leventhal, Feifei Liu, Margaret Mayer, Tess Boley Cruz, Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, and Rob McConnell. “E-Cigarette Use and Subsequent Smoking Frequency Among Adolescents.” Pediatrics 142, no. 6 (December 1, 2018): e20180486. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2018-0486.