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Seizures Overview
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has seen an increased number of reports of seizures since June 2018, many of which could be related to vaping.
Signs of a seizure will vary depending upon the type of seizure the person is experiencing. It’s even possible for a person diagnosed with epilepsy to experience more than one kind of seizure.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are two classifications of seizures: generalized and focal.
Generalized seizures involve both sides of the brain. An “absence seizure” is also known as a petit mal seizure and can result in the patient blinking rapidly or simply staring into space for several seconds. A “tonic-clonic” or grand mal seizure may make the patient experience muscle spasms, uncontrollably fall to the ground, yell or lose consciousness. Focal seizures, sometimes called partial seizures, are emitted from one area of the brain only.
The three types of focal seizures are: Simple focal seizures usually cause twitching, a change in taste or smell, or another sensation anomaly. Complex focal seizures cause the patient to become confused or to appear dazed. The patients will not be able to answer questions or take direction for possibly several minutes. Secondary generalized seizures originate in one part of the brain, much like a focal seizure, but then branch out across both sides of the brain.
Potential Link Between JUUL and Seizures
Experiencing a seizure is one possible side effect of nicotine poisoning. The FDA knows of 35 reported cases of seizures from 2010 to early 2019. Most of the people who suffered seizures were young people who had used an e-cigarette or another type of vaping mechanism.
Some people had seizures upon vaping for the first time, but some had seizures as late as the next day after vaping.
According to the FDA, vaping allows users to inhale more nicotine than they would smoking a regular cigarette and vape products contain varying amounts of nicotine.
Juul Labs created the strongest concentration of nicotine, and many other companies increased the levels in their vaping products to be able to compete with Juul.
According to research by Prue Talbot, a professor in the Department of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology at the University of California, Riverside, and James F. Pankow, a professor of chemistry at Portland State University in Oregon, the amount of nicotine in one JUUL pod is around 61 milligrams per millimeter of fluid, which is more nicotine than is found in an entire pack of regular cigarettes.
Researchers express concerns that such high levels of nicotine could have devastating consequences to the developing brain of a teenager or young adult.
“The nicotine concentrations are sufficiently high to be cytotoxic, or toxic to living cells when tested in vitro with cultured respiratory system cells,” said Talbot, the director of the UCR Stem Cell Center. “JUUL is the only electronic cigarette product we found with nicotine concentrations high enough to be toxic in standard cytotoxicity tests. A big concern is that its use will addict a new generation of adolescents to nicotine.”
In February 2019, Prue Talbot’s Lab announced that e-cigarette aerosols contain a variety of metals, including many of which are known to instigate lung diseases, including tin, silver, iron, nickel and aluminum.
