Assessment of the e-Cigarette Impact on Vascular Health

Professor Cheng, Stephen Wing Keung   (Principal Investigator (PI))

Dr Cheuk Lai Yee Bernice   (Co-Investigator)

30

2020-09-01

2023-02-28

557744

Assessment of the e-Cigarette Impact on Vascular Health

Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm, E-cigarette, Nicotine, Policy, Vascular Health

Others - Medicine, Dentistry and Health

Humanities & Social Sciences (H)

2020.A8.091.20A

Public Policy Research Funding Scheme

2020

Completed

Smoking is an important risk factor of the fatal Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) disease with unclear underlined mechanism. The pathological features of this vascular disease are inflammation, proteolysis and smooth muscle cell apoptosis. E-cigarette has been put on the market for only about 10 years and until now, the impact of e-cigarette on human vascular health is still largely unknown. Given the increasing use of e-cigarette with the inhalation of vapor and chemicals produced by hearting nicotine-containing liquid, it is important to access their biological effects on the human vascular health. It is also not known whether inhalation of the vapor released by e-cigarette has similar effects as normal cigarette on human aortic cells. The present study proposes to examine the hypothesis that e-cigarette smoking has harmful effect on human vascular health. The human aortic cell cultures and molecular experiments will be studied regarding the clinically relevant question of e-cigarette smoking with the following specific aims: Aim 1: To evaluate the impact of e-cigarette smoking in terms of inflammation, matrix degradation and cell death of human aortic VSMCs, which are the main pathological features of AAA; Aim 2: To compare the harmful impact of e-cigarette smoking with that of normal cigarette smoking and Aim 3: To delineate the underlying mechanism of e-cigarette smoking and its impact on human aortic VSMCs.