Effects of Electronic Cigarettes on Lung Biology

E-cigarettes are an increasingly popular alternate nicotine delivery system, but nothing is known about the effects of electronic cigarettes on the lungs. We hypothesize that e-cigarettes disorder airway epithelial and alveolar macrophages biology. Our goal is not to carry out a large epidemiologic study of electronic cigarette users to study lung function and other possible abnormal clinical phenotypes, but rather to focus on whether electronic cigarette smoke disorders the biology of the lung cells first exposed to the electronic cigarette smoke, a parameter that is the precursor of abnormalities in lung function and which is far more sensitive than lung function.