An evaluation of electronic cigarettes (e-cigs) over mainstream cigarettes as potential cessation aids reveals equally detrimental effects of the former on human health.

Though previous studies evaluating the effect electronic cigarette (EC) on human health have reported to be safer products, there is a serious need to study the effects of ECs on human health using a systems level approach. The purpose of this study was to perform a pair-wise comparison of nasal epithelial cell scrapings from individuals who had switched from cigarette smoke (CS) to EC for at least a period of 6 months as compared to those that had smoked only CS or were non-smokers. RNA-seq, which provides a comprehensive means to observe gene level expression changes at the transcriptome-wide level, was used for this analysis