A case published on Thursday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal chronicles a lung injury called bronchiolitis, a serious and irreversible lung condition caused by chemical exposure.
A chemical called diacetyl is known to cause bronchiolitis, and is found in the buttery flavoring in microwave popcorn. It is also found in vaping liquids.
A 17-year-old male in Ontario was initially treated for a severe cough and diagnosed with pneumonia. His worsening condition prompted antibiotics and a mechanical ventilator, but showed no improvement.
At that point, he was transferred to London Health Sciences Centre and put on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, machine – an extreme treatment that takes over the work of the lungs. That stabilized him, but did not reverse the condition.
Fearing he would not recover enough to get off the machine, he was transferred to a transplant center, and high dose steroid treatment began which helped to reduce the inflammation. Four months after his discharge, the teen still has difficulty breathing and doctors are not sure if his lungs will ever recover.
The patient had reported using both flavored nicotine vapes and THC – the psychoactive agent in marijuana. Doctors suspected a vaping-related injury, even before the U.S. outbreak had been reported.
Although the case shares similarities with the more than 2,000 cases of vaping-related illnesses in the United States, the injury is different. Instead of damaged air sacs in the lungs, the teen had damaged airways, which his doctors believe were caused by chemical injury.
Although the team says several vaping chemicals could have caused the injury, the focus was on diacetyl because it has been shown to cause similar damage.
This story is from Reuters.