Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
Environ Int. 2021 Feb;147:106323. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2020.106323. Epub 2020 Dec 21.
Electronic cigarettes (e-cig) are an increasingly popular alternative to traditional smoking but have been in use for too short of a period of time to fully understand health risks. Furthermore, associated health risks are difficult to evaluate because of a large range of flavoring agents and their combinations for use with e-cig. Many flavoring agents are generally regarded as safe but have limited studies for effects on lung. Vanillin, an aromatic aldehyde, is one of the most commonly used flavoring agents in e-cig. Vanillin is electrophilic and can be redox active, with chemical properties expected to interact within biologic systems. Because accumulating lung metabolomics studies have identified metabolic disruptions associated with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, asthma and acute respiratory distress syndrome, we used human bronchial epithelial cells (BEAS-2B) with high-resolution metabolomics analysis to determine whether these disease-associated pathways are impacted by vanillin over the range used in e-cig. A metabolome-wide association study showed that vanillin perturbed specific energy, amino acid, antioxidant and sphingolipid pathways previously associated with human disease. Analysis of a small publicly available human dataset showed associations with several of the same pathways. Because vanillin is a common and high-abundance flavorant in e-cig, these results show that vanillin has potential to be mechanistically important in lung diseases and warrants in vivo toxicity testing in the context of e-cig use.
电子烟（e-cig）作为传统吸烟的一种替代方式，越来越受到欢迎，但使用时间太短，无法充分了解其健康风险。此外，由于电子烟使用的调味剂种类繁多，且组合方式多样，相关健康风险也难以评估。许多调味剂通常被认为是安全的，但对肺部的影响研究有限。香草醛是一种芳香醛，是电子烟中最常用的调味剂之一。香草醛具有亲电性和氧化还原活性，其化学性质预计会在生物系统中相互作用。由于累积的肺部代谢组学研究已经确定了与特发性肺纤维化、哮喘和急性呼吸窘迫综合征相关的代谢紊乱，我们使用高分辨率代谢组学分析的人支气管上皮细胞（BEAS-2B）来确定香草醛是否会在电子烟使用范围内影响这些与疾病相关的途径。全代谢组关联研究表明，香草醛扰乱了先前与人类疾病相关的特定能量、氨基酸、抗氧化剂和神经酰胺代谢途径。对一个小型公开可用的人类数据集的分析显示，与其中几个相同的途径存在关联。由于香草醛是电子烟中常见且含量高的调味剂，这些结果表明，香草醛在肺部疾病中具有潜在的重要作用机制，需要在电子烟使用背景下进行体内毒性测试。
