US: What Juul’s Landmark Vaping Study Means For Tobacco Regulation

Source from:  CNN 02/27/2019

Puffing on Juul pods is just as effective for reducing specific tobacco-related biomarkers as complete abstinence from smoking. That’s the conclusion from landmark study data released Saturday during the U.S. Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco 2019 Annual Meeting.

JUUL PINES FOR FDA APPROVAL
The small clinical study is the first to be undertaken by Juul Labs, maker of the popular nicotine vaporizer devices. The former Silicon Valley startup has three other studies currently ongoing and hopes to compile enough positive data to convince the FDA to approve Juul by a 2022 deadline.

Juul Labs has argued that Juul is safer than cigarettes and an effective smoking cessation aid. The latter was demonstrated in a New England Journal of Medicine study published last month. In it, vaporizers were shown to be nearly twice as effective for quitting smoking as aids like nicotine gums and patches.

Now, Juul Labs appears to have taken the first step towards proving their safety compared to cigarettes as well, releasing data that shows a massive decrease in several cancer-related biomarkers within days of switching from cigarettes to Juul.

The study was sponsored by Juul Labs but conducted by third-party research lab Celerion Inc.

The study’s sample size is small and several health concerns remain to be answered about the flavored nicotine pods, which are wildly popular among teens. But it’s a necessary start in the company’s quest to bring regulators to its side.

WHAT THE JUUL STUDY DATA SHOWS
The study of 90 adult cigarette smokers looked for changes compared to baseline in nine specific short-term, cancer-related biomarkers which are a byproduct of smoking combustible cigarettes.

The study participants were split into six different randomized groups of 15 for the five-day inpatient trial. The members of four of those groups were switched from cigarettes to one of four different Juul flavors at 5% nicotine strength. Of the remaining two groups, one got to keep smoking their cigarettes, while the other got nothing at all, being forced to go cold turkey.

The resulting data was conclusive. There was an 85% reduction from baseline in the nine selected biomarkers among the abstinence group and the combined Juul groups. Those biomarkers instead shot up by 14% among the cigarette smokers.

“The equivalent reductions in these specific cigarette-related biomarkers across the groups who abstained from smoking and those who used JUUL products reaffirms the role vapor products can have for the adult smoker,” said Juul Labs CEO Kevin Burns in a press release.

While the results are good, they were also not entirely unexpected. The biomarkers that were studied are all tobacco-related, a substance which Juul does not contain. Nonetheless, there is now a small sample of clinical data proving Juul’s ability to significantly reduce cancer-causing biomarkers in former cigarette smokers.  Enditem