Canada May Have Found New Vaping Complication: Popcorn Lung
By Kelly Young
Edited by Susan Sadoughi, MD, and Richard Saitz, MD, MPH, FACP, DFASAM
Canadian physicians may have identified a new type of lung injury linked to vaping. In CMAJ, they report a potential case of vaping-associated bronchiolitis obliterans, a form of which is known as "popcorn lung."
Previously, a number of workers in factories making microwave popcorn developed "popcorn lung" after inhaling the flavoring chemical diacetyl, which is also used in e-liquids.
An otherwise healthy, 17-year-old male with a history of heavy, daily vaping presented with cough, dyspnea, and fever. Tests for infectious agents were negative. Computed tomography revealed a diffuse tree-in-bud pattern, which differs from what has been observed in patients with e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI).
The patient developed refractory hypercapnia and required extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, but he improved with corticosteroids. He was hospitalized for 47 days and still had impaired lung function at 4 months.
Separately, a correspondence in the New England Journal of Medicinedescribes autopsy findings from a young man who died from untreated EVALI.
CMAJ article (Free)
CMAJ editorial (Free)
NEJM correspondence on pathology of vaping-related lung illness (Free)
NEJM correspondence on pulmonary illnesses (Free)
Background: Physician's First Watch coverage of bronchiolitis obliterans in man who ate microwave popcorn (Free)
NEJM E-Cigarettes and Vaping-Related Disease page (Free)
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Etiam capillus unus habet umbram suam.
(Even a single hair casts a shadow.)
-Publilius Syrus
Although dermatologists remain the undisputed experts on hair and nail disorders in addition to the skin, there is no doubt that hair loss, in particular, can be extremely daunting from both a diagnostic and therapeutic perspective. Biotin represents an inexpensive and relatively safe vitamin that is frequently recommended in situations that lack a more specific therapy or as an adjunctive treatment. It is widely available in numerous over-the-counter nutritional supplements that promise to support hair and nail growth despite the fact that it may not do much outside of a fairly narrow set of rare conditions.1 Importantly, although biotin deficiency is thought to be rare in healthy patients, one provocative study suggested that some 38% of women presenting with hair loss may be biotin-deficient on laboratory testing.2 Finally, although biotin may be suggested because it "can't hurt," more recent evidence suggests that it is not totally benign and can potentially cause issues by interfering with diagnostic laboratory tests, including those for troponin and thyroid.3
A recent publication found that, of those surveyed taking biotin, 57% reported no noted improvement in the condition they for which they were taking it.4 In this clever paper by John and Lipner, they take this a step further by studying customer reviews on the online marketplace Amazon.com for biotin supplements. Through this strikingly modern (and somewhat unconventional) approach to research, what they found is fascinating. There were over 2000 biotin products on the marketplace, so they focused on the 16 products in the top 1 percentile. The mean review score was a surprisingly positive 4.38 out of 5 stars, with over 27% of the reviews specifically stating that the biotin helped their hair. Remarkably, not a single product examined listed a warning about the ability of biotin to interfere with laboratory testing. Their conclusion supports the idea that biotin supplementation is extremely common and, despite the lack of robust scientific evidence, seems to be well-liked by the patients who are using it. As we move toward a world where patient-reported outcomes are looming larger and "customer satisfaction" has very much become a part of medicine, it is increasingly difficult to disregard such findings. As the authors suggest, further studies are clearly called for; but, in the meantime, education about the potential effects on laboratory testing is critical since clearly patients are taking biotin whether we recommend it or not.
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