Background Electronic cigarette (EC) consumption (‘vaping’) is rapidly increasing, not only in adults but also in adolescents. Little is known about the association between vaping and problem behaviors such as drinking.
Methods We used data from the 11th Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey, which was conducted in 2015 and included 68,043 participants who were Korean middle and high school students. The survey assessed EC, cigarette, and alcohol use. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine risk of current drinking and problem drinking across the following categories of users: never user (never used either product), former user (use of EC or cigarettes in the past, but not currently), vaping only, smoking only, and dual user (current use of both products).
Results EC only users were 1.2% in males, and 0.3% in females. Dual user of both conventional cigarettes and ECs were 5.1% in males, and 1.2% in females. Drinking frequency, drinking quantity per once, and problem drinking were higher among vapers than non-vapers and former-vapers, moreover, were higher among daily vapers than intermittent vapers. Compared to never users, EC only users were higher on risk of current drink and problem drink. The dual users were highest on risk of current drink.
Conclusion Vaping is independently associated with alcohol use problems in Korean students, even those not currently smoking. Moreover, dual use of cigarettes and ECs is strongly associated with alcohol use problems. Therefore, vaping students should be concerned about their hidden alcohol use problems.
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Background Metabolic indexes (blood pressure, blood glucose, and lipid) differ depending on lower or upper normal value of obesity indexes (weight, percent-body-fat, and waist circumference) despite normal value. Therefore, we examined metabolic indexes changes across obesity indexes changes. Methods: We analyzed 344 adult men who received routine-checkups with normal weight and waist circumference before and after follow-up. We used multiple-linear-regression to examine associations between changes of obesity indexes and metabolic indexes before and after follow-up. We examined differences of metabolic indexes by t-test and odds ratios of normal or abnormal metabolic indexes by multiple-logistic-regression in groups where obesity indexes were increased and decreased.Results: The mean follow-up was 1.38 ± 0.32 years and there were associations between weight change rate and changes in systolic-blood-pressure (SBP), diastolic-blood-pressure (DBP), triglyceride (TG), and high–density-lipoprotein (HDL) (P = 0.001, 0.03, 0.001, 0.01), associations between percent-body-fat change and changes in SBP, DBP, fasting-blood-glucose (FBG) and TG (P = 0.02, 0.002, < 0.001, 0.03), and associations between waist circumference change rate and changes in FBG, TG, HDL (P = 0.01, 0.01, 0.02). There were significant SBP and HDL differences in weight decrease and increase groups (P = 0.04, < 0.001), FBG difference in percent-body-fat decrease and increase groups (P = 0.01), and FBG and TG differences in waist circumference decrease/increase groups (P = 0.03, 0.03). As compared with percent-body-fat decrease group, percent-body-fat increase group had odds ratio of FBG ≥ 100 of 2.98 (95% confidential interval [CI], 1.18 to 7.51) with a significance on only FBG of initially normal metabolic components and conversely percent-body-fat decrease group had odds ratio of FBG < 100 of 3.22 (95% CI, 1.21 to 8.60) with a significance on only FBG of initially abnormal metabolic components. Conclusion: Increased obesity indexes even within normal range, could change metabolic indexes.
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