(13 Sep 2019) A Massachusetts doctor who has treated victims of the mystery vaping illness is describing the frustration and horrors of trying to help patients suffering from an unknown disease.
Dr. Jonathan Winickoff works at the Harvard Medical School and has treated patients of the vaping illness at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
He says patients often come in with symptoms of a typical pneumonia that physicians would try to treat with antibiotics vain, sometimes ending up in the intensive care unit – as effectively drown on fluids that accumulate in their lungs.
"We do treat them with antibiotics in case there's a coincident infection. Because of many of these patients their immune systems, their lung immune systems that would normally treat infection are compromised because of the electronic cigarette use," Winickoff says.
"We know that electronic cigarette use itself compromises the lungs, compromises the immune system, so then when something else happens – in this case some bad product – the body is defenseless."
Winickoff says components in electronic cigarettes are behind behind the mystery illness.
"It turns out, it's a toxic mix of chemicals – everything from propylene glycol, heavy metals, carcinogens, high doses of nicotine itself as well as combined with a very strong acid.
The acid plays a crucial role in the design of these products to lower the pH, making them more acidic, creating a nicotine salt which instead of the body saying 'oh, this is something that's a potential poison' and halting the inhalation, the brain says 'give me more,'" he said.
Winickoff still remembers his first patient with the disease and his frantic efforts to save his life.
"I knew something was happening there and I knew something different was happening there," Winickoff said. "And when I asked him what was going on was there anything else, that's when I found out he was vaping."
Winickoff is convinced that the mystery illness was been hitting electronic cigarette users for years, but many did not realize that a public health crisis was underway because of a relatively small number of users of the product.
"What's surprising to me about this epidemic is that it hasn't happened sooner. With millions of people using these products in a completely unregulated environment, it seems that this was just a ticking time bomb ready to happen," he says
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