menthol e-cigarette Archives - Amazing Health Advances

New E-Cigarette Products Contain Highly Potent Sweeteners

The AHA! Team — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 05:23:42 +0000

Eric-Sven Jordt, Ph.D. via Duke Health – As of now, neither federal nor state regulations address the increasing presence of artificial sweeteners in tobacco products. e-cigarettes tested by Duke researchers A majority of popular disposable e-cigarettes tested by Duke researchers contain a potent, unregulated artificial sweetener that may enhance the appeal to young and first-time users. The additive neotame is up to 13,000 times sweeter than table sugar and is often used in e-cigarettes that also feature fruity, candy and cool mint flavors. Clinical studies have found that candy flavors and sweeteners increase the appeal, preference, and abuse potential of e-cigarettes and other tobacco products. “The addition of a potent sweetener may increase the potential for addiction by facilitating initiation and chronic use,” said Eric-Sven Jordt, Ph.D., associate professor in the departments of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke and senior author of a study appearing June 2 in JAMA. “The presence of neotame also raises toxicity concerns,” Jordt said. “While approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in food, it is not known whether it is safe to inhale neotame heated and vaporized by an e-cigarette.” Jordt and colleagues — including co-lead authors Hanno C. Erythropel, Ph.D., an analytical chemist at Yale School of Medicine and Sairam V. Jabba, Ph.D., senior research scientist in Duke’s Department of Anesthesiology – analyzed 55 disposable e-cigarettes marketed in 2024, including the popular brands Elfbar, Geekbar, Mr. Fog and Breeze, and products that contained no nicotine or a nicotine-mimicking substance called 6-methylnicotine. Of the 55 disposable e-cigarettes tested all contained neotame, with an average neotame content that was nearly five times higher than in a mentos mint candy. Disposable e-cigarettes containing the nicotine analog 6-methylnicotine had even higher neotame content. “Our study demonstrates that the artificial sweetener neotame is a ubiquitous ingredient in popular disposable e-cigarettes sold in the United States,” Jabba said. “Interestingly, less popular FDA-authorized ENDS products such as Vuse or those awaiting an authorization decision that were introduced before 2021 such as Juul do not contain this additive. The addition of neotame to disposable cigarettes may give these products a competitive edge. Youth and young adults strongly favor sweetened products, especially in combination with candy flavors.” As of now, neither federal nor state regulations address the increasing presence of artificial sweeteners in tobacco products. “FDA and state regulators need to rein in the spread of heavily sweetened, disposable e-cigarettes that have not been authorized for marketing by the FDA, but are nevertheless available in local stores and from online vendors,” Jordt said. “Otherwise, gains made in the reduction of e-cigarette use by youth may be reversed.” In addition to Jabba, Jordt and Erythropel, study authors include Remi A. Mellinghoff, Victor Garcia-Gallet, Peter Silinski, and Julie B. Zimmerman. Funding for the study was provided by the Yale Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health (U54DA036151, R01DA060884), and the Center for Tobacco Products of the FDA. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH or the FDA. To read the original article click here.

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Flavored E-Cigarettes May Affect the Brain Differently Than Non-Flavored

AHA Publisher — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 07:00:21 +0000

Penn State via EurekAlert – Flavoring can change how the brain responds to e-cigarette aerosols that contain nicotine, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. Andrea Hobkirk and her team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to understand how the brain’s reward areas react to e-cigarette aerosol with and without flavor. “There are nearly 12 million e-cigarette users in the United States,” Hobkirk, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral health at Penn State College of Medicine, said. “The vast majority use e-cigarettes with menthol, mint, fruity and dessert-type flavors. Although regulations that limit the sale of flavored e-cigarettes may help curb use among youth, they might also stop adults from using e-cigarettes as a smoking reduction or cessation aid. We are trying to understand how flavor influences e-cigarette reward and satisfaction for smokers and the risk of nicotine addiction for non-smokers.” The team first developed a device to deliver e-cigarette aerosols during brain scanning. Next, the research team used this new device to deliver aerosols containing a low dose of nicotine to nine adult female smokers during a single laboratory visit. One aerosol had a strawberry-vanilla flavor, and the other aerosol was flavorless. The team compared the strength of brain activation and reward brain region involvement between flavored and unflavored aerosols. “For our study, we were interested in looking first at, for smokers, how flavor might affect their response to nicotine e-cigarettes,” Hobkirk said. “We recruited smokers who had never used e-cigarettes before or were not regular e-cigarette users. What we were interested in is figuring out whether or not flavor changed how they perceived or how their brain responded to this e-cigarette use.” The researchers found that the strawberry-vanilla aerosol engaged the brain’s taste region. In contrast, the unflavored aerosol engaged the brain’s reward region, similar to observations during cigarette smoking. The researchers published their results in the journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology. The researchers also assessed patterns of neural activity between brain regions. Stronger connectivity between two brain regions typically means that these regions are working together. They found that key brain reward regions were strongly connected with flavored aerosol and not unflavored. The findings suggest that, for smokers, unflavored e-cigarettes may mimic the typical smoking experience more than flavored e-cigarettes. “We found that for smokers who had never really used e-cigarettes before, the flavor did not make the experience more rewarding for them, at least in terms of what we saw in the brain,” Hobkirk said. “It did not make the experience of breathing in these aerosols more like a smoking experience. Typically, that’s what smokers are looking for when they’re trying to transition over to a healthier product. They want something that gives all the similar rewarding and sensory-motor effects of their regular combustible cigarette, but without all the harmful effects that come in the toxins of a cigarette. We found that adding flavor doesn’t necessarily do that for these smokers, at least what we saw in their response to them in the brain. This could suggest that, potentially, smokers do not necessarily need these flavors to make the transition from a combustible cigarette to an e-cigarette.” To read the original article click here.

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