抄録
Background: Heated tobacco product (HTP) use in Japan has rapidly increased. Despite this rapid spread, little is known about the health effects of HTP use. We conducted a longitudinal cohort study to investigate the change in smoking habits following the spread of HTP use and its effect on forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) decline.
Methods: Participants consisted of a resident population (n = 2,612; mean age, 67.7 years) with FEV1 measurement in 2012–2014 and 2018–2019, and a worksite population (n = 722; mean age 49.3 years) without FEV1 data. Participants were categorized as combustible cigarette-only smokers, HTP-only users, dual users, past smokers, and never smokers. The association between smoking group and the change in smoking consumption over a mean 5.6 years was examined. Differences in annual FEV1 change between smoking groups were examined in the resident population.
Results: Prevalence of HTP-only and dual users in 2018–2019 was 0.8% and 0.6% in the resident population, and 5.0% and 1.9% in the worksite population, respectively. The overall number of tobacco products smoked/used increased in dual users compared to baseline, but not in others. Annual FEV1 decline in dual users tended to be greater than that in cigarette-only smokers (16; 95% confidence interval, −34 to 2 mL/year after full adjustment). Participants switching to HTP-only use 1.7 years before had a similar FEV1 decline as cigarette-only smokers.
Conclusions: HTP use, including dual use, is prevalent even in a rural region of Japan. Dual users appear to smoke/use tobacco products more and have a greater FEV1 decline. Tobacco policy should consider dual use as high-risk.
© 2021 Sei Harada et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
