VAPING puts people at a higher risk of developing severe Covid, a study has revealed.
Healthy, young e-cigarette users who caught the disease were found to have increased lung inflammation, which could cause lingering cardio-vascular complications.
The findings are from a US study of 45 non-smokers, 30 vapers and 29 tobacco smokers.
The vapers and smokers were found to have higher levels of blood plasma proteins that the virus needed to survive.
Researcher Dr Theodoros Kelesidis said: "The key message is that smoking is the worst, but vaping is not innocent.
From tongue scraping to saying no, here are 12 health trends to try in 2023
"This has been shown for many lung diseases but not for Covid.
"It was a quite interesting and novel finding that vaping changed the levels of key proteins that the virus uses to replicate."
Dr Kelesidis added: "E-cigarette vapers may be at higher risk than non-smokers of developing infections and inflammatory disorders of the lungs.
"Electronic cigarettes are not harmless and should be used for only the shortest time possible in smoking cessation, and not at all by non-smokers."
