United States: A mom or a dad who vapes in the comfort of their own home may be dooming their child to eczema, according to new findings.
According to a survey with samples collected from 35,000 U. S. households, children who had at least one parent who vaped had a 24% higher probability of being diagnosed with eczema compared to the children who had two non-vaping parents, as reported by HealthDay.
Link Between Parental Vaping and Child Eczema Risk
“Our results suggest that parental e-cigarette use was associated with pediatric atopic dermatitis,” concluded a team led by Dr. Golara Honari, a clinical associate professor of dermatology at Stanford University in California.

Several studies quoted by the researchers confirmed that xenoestrogens present in the fumes emitted by e-cigarettes could cause fluctuations in children’s skin.
As they have pointed out in the previous studies conducted in the laboratories, human keratinocytes and 3-dimensional skin models exposed to e-cigarette fluids and aerosol residues “have shown increased levels of oxidative stress. ”Keratinocytes are cells that located in the outer layer of skin called epidermis, and it accounted for approximately 90% of the total epidermal cells.
“We hypothesize that secondhand exposure to e-cigarettes is associated with a similar response among children, elevating atopic dermatitis risk,” the Stanford team wrote.
Survey Insights
The new study used primary data collected in the National Health Interview Survey conducted from 2014 to 2018 with about a sample of 35,000 households. The study in consideration is a cross-sectional survey of families and is conducted by the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In this study, parents were interviewed on any instance of eczema ever diagnosed in the child in the home and any use of e-cigarettes.
But children who were present when a parent vaped were 24 percent more likely to have eczema than those who were not, according to the study by Honari’s team. And this was the case even if the parent used the conventional cigarettes in the same house.
Call for Action
However, the Stanford team was the first to clarify that the study could not conclusively prove cause and effect, as reported by HealthDay.
Yet, this initial investigation into how vaping impacts kids’ skin was necessary ‘due to the exponentially rising use of e-cigarettes, and a lack of research on how it affects the skin health of proximal family members’, according to Honari and colleagues.
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