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Heated tobacco products (like IQOS) increase the risk of metabolic syndrome more than smoking. Jee Y, et al. The effect of heated tobacco products on metabolic syndrome: A cohort study. Tob Induc Dis. 2024 Dec 16;22. doi: 10.18332/tid/194490. PMID: 39687080; PMCID: PMC11647454.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39687080/

“This paper provides direct evidence that, contrary to the assumption based on a limited number of biomarkers of exposure that HTP is less dangerous than combusted e-cigarettes, direct evidence based on actual disease shows that HTP poses higher risks for metabolic syndrome than smoking cigarettes.

Metabolic syndrome consists of having at least three of the following: abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides, or low serum high-density lipoprotein.

Policymakers and regulators must stop accepting industry assertions that these products represent harm reduction. They don’t.”

Source: Stanton Glantz Blog, 31 Dec 2024

TRC Research Commentary

Jackson SE, et al. The price of a cigarette: 20 minutes of life? Addiction. Editorial. Accepted 18 Dec 2024.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.16757

”We estimate that, on average, smokers in Britain who do not quit lose approximately 20 minutes of life expectancy for each cigarette they smoke. This is time that would likely be spent in relatively good health. Stopping smoking at every age is beneficial, but the sooner smokers get off this escalator of death, the longer and healthier they can expect their lives to be.

Epidemiological data indicate that the harm caused by smoking is cumulative, and the sooner the person stops and the more cigarettes they avoid smoking, the longer they live. Thus, a person smoking 10 cigarettes per day who quits smoking on the 1st of January 2025 could prevent the loss of a full day of life by the 8th of January, a week of life by the 20th of February, and a month by the 5th of August. By the end of the year, they could have avoided losing 50 days of life.

Studies suggest that smokers typically lose about the same number of healthy years as they do total years of life. Thus, smoking primarily eats into the relatively healthy middle years rather than shortening the period at the end of life, which is often marked by chronic illness or disability. So a 60-year-old smoker will typically have the health profile of a 70-year-old non-smoker.”

Comment: This editorial in the journal Addiction is an update from the longitudinal study of British doctors, which now shows an increase in the estimated loss of life expectancy per cigarette to 20 minutes overall: 17 minutes for men and 22 minutes for women, as shown in the supplementary file of this editorial. Importantly, it makes more sense to wish people a healthy life in 2025 without tobacco use rather than to discuss ‘harm reductions.’ Health promotion is what we can do for ourselves for life enhancement, not calculating how much harm we wish to allow ourselves in having an ‘average life expectancy’. Stephen Hamann