Cases of lung illness and deaths from vaping have tapered off since peaking in September, health officials said on Thursday, but the outbreak also reached a grim new milestone: The youngest death, of a 15-year-old, was reported by Dallas County Health and Human Services.
The teenager had “a chronic underlying medical condition,” Texas officials said in a statement on Dec. 31, but they did not identify the condition, the patient’s gender or what products the patient had been vaping.
“Reporting a death in a teen due to Evali is so tragic,” Dr. Philip Huang, the Dallas County health director, said in a statement, referring to the official name for the disorder, E-cigarette or Vaping-Associated Lung Injury. “We are seeing that severe lung damage, and even death, can occur with just short-term use of these products.”
The statement said that one teenager in the Dallas area who was hospitalized with the illness reported having vaped for only one month.
Nationwide, there have been 2,602 cases of the illness and 57 deaths as of Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday. The median age of those who died was 51, with a range of 15 to 75 years. Before the Texas teenager’s death, the youngest reported vaping fatality was a 17-year-old Bronx resident.
Many of the older patients who died were reported to have underlying health conditions. On Wednesday, Massachusetts reported its fourth death: a man in his 70s from Middlesex County who had vaped THC, state health officials said.
Although the outbreak seems to be slowing, states are still reporting new cases every week, and more deaths are being investigated, the CDC said.
Most patients had vaped THC, the high-inducing chemical in marijuana. The CDC said the cause of their lung damage was very likely to be vitamin E acetate, an oily substance added to stretch the supply of THC. Laboratories have found the vitamin in illegal THC products and in fluid samples from patients’ lungs.
How vitamin E acetate could injure the lungs is not known. Researchers have suggested that it might disrupt a natural substance in the lungs called surfactant, which helps keep air sacs open and is essential for breathing. Another possibility is that the vitamin oil, when heated in a vaping device, may break down into a powerful toxin that leaves the lungs with damage similar to the chemical burns seen in war victims attacked with poison gas.
Though much of the evidence points to THC, health officials say that does not mean nicotine vaping can be considered safe.
“While it appears that vitamin E acetate is associated with Evali, there are many different substances and product sources that are being investigated, and there may be more than one cause,” the CDC says on its website. “Therefore, the best way for people to ensure that they are not at risk while the investigation continues is to consider refraining from the use of all e-cigarette, or vaping, products.”
It adds: “There is no safe tobacco product. All tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, carry a risk.”
source: news.abs-cbn.com
Italy's parliament legalized the production and sale of a weaker form of cannabis this week, ending months of uncertainty for farmers and sellers.
Tobacconists and specialized shops will be allowed to stock cannabis products, which must not contain more than 0.5 percent of the psychoactive compound THC, from January 1.
Parliament approved the amendment overnight on Thursday after a long-running row pitching former interior minister Matteo Salvini against small business owners and the agriculture lobby.
Far-right leader Salvini had vowed to close all shops selling so-called cannabis light.
Italy's agriculture association Coldiretti welcomed parliament's move, noting that the area under cannabis production in Italy had grown from 400 hectares (988 acres) in 2013 to 4,000 hectares last year.
"It's the end of a nightmare," Luca Fiorentino, founder of cannabis supply firm Cannabidiol Distribution, told La Stampa after the parliamentary vote.
"After Salvini's witch hunt I had to fire 10 people and I lost 68 percent of my revenues."
Last May, Italy's highest court affirmed that the sale of cannabis was illegal, but gave judges discretion to consider the "narcotic effect" of the cannabis at issue when issuing decisions.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
A 17-year-old boy whose lungs were irreversibly damaged by vaping received a double-lung transplant at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, a lifesaving measure taken when a patient’s own lungs are diseased or damaged beyond repair and there is no other hope of survival, doctors said Tuesday.
Without the transplant, performed last month, the patient “would have faced certain death,” Dr. Hassan Nemeh, who led the surgical team, said during a news conference at the hospital.
The patient’s lungs were scarred, stiffened, pocked with dead spots and extremely inflamed, he said. On a CT scan before the surgery, the patient’s chest appeared almost empty, as if the lungs had vanished. Normal lungs look dark on imaging because they are full of air; the patient’s were not visible because they were not working. There was no air.
“What I saw in his lungs is like nothing I’ve seen before, and I’ve been doing lung transplants for 20 years,” Nemeh said. He added, “This is an evil I haven’t faced before.”
The patient is recovering well and is up and about now, but still in the hospital. His name is being withheld to protect his privacy, but he and his family wanted to release information about his case in the hope that it might persuade other people to quit vaping or never start, hospital officials said.
A doctor at the briefing read a statement from the family, which said, in part:
“We asked Henry Ford doctors to share that the horrific life-threatening effects of vaping are very real! Our family could never have imagined being at the center of the largest adolescent public health crisis to face our country in decades.
“Within a very short period of time, our lives have been forever changed. He has gone from the typical life of a perfectly healthy 16-year-old athlete — attending high school, hanging out with friends, sailing and playing video games — to waking up intubated and with two new lungs, facing a long and painful recovery process as he struggles to regain his strength and mobility, which has been severely impacted.”
The doctors declined to say what products the patient had been vaping, how long he had been doing it or how often. About 86% of the patients with lung injuries in this outbreak had vaped THC, the chemical in marijuana that makes people high.
The case is the first transplant reported in the nationwide outbreak of vaping-related lung injuries, and it highlights the severity of an illness that, as of Nov. 5, had sickened 2,051 people and killed 40. Researchers have described the lung damage from vaping as chemical burns, similar to the injuries in people who have inhaled toxic fumes in industrial accidents, or in soldiers attacked with mustard gas in World War I.
The patient was first admitted to a different hospital on Sept. 6 with what was thought to be pneumonia. His condition worsened and he was placed on a ventilator on Sept. 12. He continued to deteriorate. On Sept. 17, he was transferred to a second hospital, where he was connected to a machine that delivers oxygen directly to the bloodstream.
His health continued to decline, and in early October, he was transferred to Henry Ford Hospital, where he was put on the waiting list for a lung transplant. A national organization sets the criteria for eligibility, not individual hospitals. Several factors quickly pushed him to the to top of the list, Nemeh said: He was a child, the lung damage was irreversible and he would die without the transplant.
The surgery was performed on Oct. 15. The doctors said they could not reveal any information about the source except to say that the donor had been healthy.
Health officials investigating the outbreak described a major advance last week: Researchers found a “very strong culprit,” a form of vitamin E, in the lungs of patients who had the vaping illness. The substance, vitamin E acetate, is sometimes used by illicit sellers to “cut” or dilute THC and increase profits.
Finding the chemical in the lungs meshed with earlier investigations that had already found it in vaping products.
The vitamin compound is thick and sticky. Precisely how it might damage the lungs is not yet known, and health authorities say it is still possible that other chemicals added to vaping fluids may also contribute to lung disease.
The doctors in Detroit did not say whether vitamin E acetate had been found in the patient’s lungs.
“We’re going to see more of this,” said Dr. Mangala Narasimhan, a lung specialist at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and Northwell Health’s regional director of critical care, who has treated several severe cases of the illness. “We definitely see some patients who have such severe lung damage, we are thinking that some of it might not be completely reversible.”
None of her patients have needed transplants.
In general, lungs for transplantation are difficult to obtain, she said. “A huge number of patients die waiting.”
About 2,500 lung transplants were performed in the United States in 2018, compared with more than 21,000 kidney transplants.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
MEXICO CITY - Mexican lawmakers gave final and overwhelming approval Friday to a bill legalizing medical marijuana after a national debate on narcotics policy in a country mired in brutal drug violence.
The legislation also allows use of marijuana for scientific research, as well as production and distribution of pot for those two stated purposes.
The vote in the Chamber of Deputies was 371 in favor and seven against with 11 abstentions.
The bill will now go to President Enrique Pena Nieto for his signature and then publication in the official government gazette, the lower house said in a statement.
The Senate approved the bill by a wide margin in December.
With Friday's vote, Mexico will join several US states and other nations in Latin America that allow cannabis for medical uses.
Pena Nieto proposed legalizing medical marijuana in a major policy shift in April after his government organized forums to discuss changes to the laws.
The bill fell short of demands from some lawmakers and civil groups that argue that a wider legalization of marijuana use could help the country reduce drug-related violence.
But proponents said it was a major step that will address Mexicans' need of an alternative medical treatment.
The bill authorizes the Health Ministry to design regulations for the use, import and production of pharmaceutical products made from cannabis or marijuana, including tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the plant's main psychoactive ingredient. Products with one percent concentration of THC will be allowed.
Growing marijuana for medical and scientific purposes will not be punishable.
A family in northern Mexico became a symbol of the push to legalize medical marijuana last year when the parents of a young epileptic girl won a court battle to import a cannabis-based treatment to stop her daily seizures.
The girl's father, Raul Elizalde, told AFP then that the legislation represented "great progress," but that it should make it easier for patients to acquire THC by letting them buy it without a prescription.
In a separate major case in November 2015, the Supreme Court authorized four people to grow and smoke pot for recreational purposes.
Although Pena Nieto is opposed to a broader legalization of marijuana, he has proposed increasing the amount of the drug that can legally be possessed for personal consumption to 28 grams (one ounce) from five grams.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
