E-cigarettes can help people stop smoking, but the long-term effects of e-cigarette / vaping initiation remain unknown. In this project, we will use our newly established Genetics, E-cigarette and Nicotine Consortium (GENiC) to identify genetic variants associated with vaping. This will provide information about the biological determinants of individual differences in vaping and support causal inference analyses into the downstream behavioural and health consequences of vaping.

At present, it is difficult to determine which genetic variants are specifically associated with vaping rather than smoking combustible cigarettes because most e-cigarette users have also smoked. However, data on non-smoking e-cigarette users are now emerging in large, genetically-informed cohort studies like ALSPAC, which enables – for the first time – the identification of genetic variants associated with vaping initiation (i.e., using e-cigarettes regularly or more than 100 times) in smoking-naïve young people.

We plan to use the available genetic data in ALSPAC and data relating to smoking and e-cigarette initiation to investigate whether a person’s genetic information can be used to predict e-cigarette initiation.