Long Term Cerebrovascular Dysfunction in the Offspring from Maternal Electronic Cigarette Use during Pregnancy.

Abstract

Electronic cigarettes (E-cigs) have been promoted as harm-free or less-risky than smoking, even for women during pregnancy. These claims are made largely on E-cig aerosol having fewer number of toxic chemicals compared to cigarette smoke. Given that even low levels of smoking are found to produce adverse birth outcomes, we sought to test the hypothesis that vaping during pregnancy (with or without nicotine) would not be harm-free, and would result in vascular dysfunction that would be evident in offspring during adolescent and/or adult life. Pregnant female Sprague Dawley rats were exposed to E-cig aerosol (1-hour/day, 5 days/week, starting on gestational day 2 until pups were weaned) using e-liquid with 0 mg/ml (E-cig0) or 18 mg/ml nicotine (E-cig18) and compared to ambient air exposed controls. Body mass at birth and at weaning were not different between groups. Assessment of middle cerebral artery (MCA) reactivity revealed a 51-56% reduction in endothelial-dependent dilation response to acetylcholine (ACh) for both E-cig0 and E-cig18 in 1-month, 3-month (adolescent), and 7-month old (adult) offspring (p<0.05 compared to air, all time points). MCA response to sodium nitroprusside (SNP) and myogenic tone were not different across groups suggesting that endothelial-independent responses were not altered. The MCA vasoconstrictor response (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) was also not different across treatment and age groups. These data demonstrate that maternal vaping during pregnancy is not harm-free and confers significant cerebrovascular health risk/dysfunction to offspring that persists into adult life.