Pregnant parents told vaping doesn’t harm unborn babies

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A new study has found that vaping does not harm unborn babies, and doctors should reassure pregnant women that it is safe to make the switch from cigarettes.

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London found that switching to vaping was better for the overall health of mothers-to-be and babies than continuing to smoke.

Cigarettes are known to lead to smaller birth weights and higher rates of pregnancy complication, while similar effects were not found in women who had vaped.

This latest study looked at 1,140 pregnant smokers at 23 hospitals in England and at a stop-smoking service in Scotland, using women’s saliva to measure their exposure to nicotine.

They were also questioned on their use of cigarettes or alternatives, babies’ birth weights, respiratory symptoms and other data.

It was discovered that women who smoked alongside using vapes or nicotine patches had babies with similar birth weights to women who had only smoked.

However, women who had only used vapes or nicotine patches but avoided cigarettes gave birth to babies with similar weights to non-smokers.

Professor Tim Coleman, from the University of Nottingham’s Smoking in Pregnancy research group, which led recruitment for the trial, said: “Smoking in pregnancy is a massive public health problem and nicotine-containing aids can help pregnant women to stop smoking, but some clinicians are reticent about providing nicotine replacement therapy [NRT] or e-cigarettes in pregnancy.”

The trial found that e-cigarettes were more than twice as popular as nicotine patches amongst quitters, with users having lower rates of respiratory infection.

Professor Peter Hajek, from the Wolfson Institute of Population Health at Queen Mary University of London, who led the research, said: “E-cigarettes helped pregnant smokers quit without posing any detectable risks to pregnancy compared with stopping smoking without further nicotine use. Using nicotine containing aids to stop smoking in pregnancy thus appears safe.

“The harms to pregnancy from smoking, in late pregnancy at least, seem to be due to other chemicals in tobacco smoke rather than nicotine.”