A worse case of COVID-19 is now listed among the side effects of Juul, says an amended lawsuit filed against the e-cig giant.

A number of school districts and parents filed a class action lawsuit against Juul Labs Inc. over the company’s marketing to teens who have become addicted to nicotine. The complaint is in the San Francisco district court.

Now, the coronavirus identified as COVID-19 is responsible for a worldwide pandemic that has killed more than 2.3 million people worldwide and resulted in 158,691 deaths. Researchers now say that people who use e-cigarettes are more apt to suffer more serious bouts of COVID-19.

The pandemic has been marked by the rapid deterioration of lung capacity among those afflicted. A patient can seem stable at one moment, but in dire need of a ventilator the next moment, according to health care workers who have seen it happen in hospitals. Ensuring your lungs are in the best shape possible is paramount to overcoming the disease in a quicker and hopefully less disabling manner.

Vaping damages the cells in the respiratory system that work with the immune system, already hindering the body’s ability to fight any type of respiratory disease, said Dr. Alexa Mieses, a family doctor in Durham, North Carolina. The Huffington Post interviewed Dr. Mieses, who is also an assistant professor of family medicine for the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Dr. Mieses said as soon as someone vapes, the body’s immune system rushes to control the damage the nicotine and other chemicals are doing to the lungs, which means there aren’t as many immune system soldiers left to fight COVID-19.

Side Effects of Juul and COVID-19

“COVID-19 is a lung infection that aggressively attacks the lungs and even leaves lung cells and tissue dead,” said Dr. Albert Rizzo, M.D., American Lung Association’s Chief Medical Officer, in a press release. “While it’s important to prevent getting COVID-19 in the first place, it’s also essential that we do all we can to keep our lungs healthy to avoid the worse effects of the disease.”

As an adjunct to their immune system function, the lungs have a mucus layer on the airways and a fine layer of hair-like cilia that help move mucus and particles up and out of the lungs. This action helps keep us from getting bacterial or viral infections.

Inhaling irritants such as tobacco smoke and vaping emissions prevents the mucus and cilia from working optimally. When the irritating chemicals and particles aren’t fully removed from the lungs, the damaged immune system leads to chronic inflammation in the airways. At this point, it’s easier for COVID-19 to overcome the immune system and for more serious complications to take hold, according to the American Lung Association.

Dr. Rizzo said that smoking and vaping leave lung tissue in a fragile, inflamed condition that make the lungs more vulnerable to infection.

COVID-19 can decrease the capacity of the lungs by about 50 percent, according to Robert Jackler, chair of the department of otolaryngology at Stanford Medicine, who spoke with the Huffington Post.

While a person with healthy lungs can benefit from supplemental oxygen during a bout of respiratory illness, the same may not be true for someone who has smoked or vaped, said Jackler.

“The pulmonary reserve – your ability to withstand deterioration in the lungs – is very much influenced by your smoking [and vaping] history,” Jackler told the Huffington Post.

Jackler also warned that the large flumes of vapor that come out of the vaping person’s lungs can carry the contaminants of the vaping juices plus the respiratory secretions of the person who is vaping. Even though respiratory droplets are generally heavy enough to be relatively quickly pulled down to the ground through gravity, vaping clouds are lighter because they are aerosol form. He said that when mixed with vaping clouds, respiratory secretions might remain suspended in the air for several minutes or up to two hours after the vaping cloud has been exhaled.

Side effects of Juul and other e-cigarettes also can change the composition of the microbiome in the mouth, which can cause anyone vaping to become more vulnerable to gum disease, inflammation and infection, including COVID-19, according to Healthline.com.

A research team from the New York University College of Dentistry published a study of more than 100 cigarette smokers, e-cig vapers and nonsmokers. Smokers had a 73 percent higher rate of gum disease and infection while vapers had a 43 percent increased risk of both compared to nonsmokers, who had a 28 percent risk of such disease.

The study’s co-author and professor of basic science and craniofacial biology at the NYU college of Dentistry Deepak Saxena, PhD, MS told Healthline, “The microbiome is reversible, so if they stop [vaping or smoking] now and the cells are not in stress and there is a good saliva production, the oral ecology will become normal again.”

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This article is not legal advice. It is presented 
for informational purposes only.