Japanese Scholars Report a Surge in E-Cigarette Research
Japanese scholars report that research on e-cigarettes and nicotine has surged over the past decade, based on publication trends found in the PubMed medical database.
According to the Yahoo News Japan website, the Japanese writer Masahiko Ishida, who has a master's degree in medicine, pointed out that from the point of view of the number of academic papers published, the research on e-cigarettes and nicotine has increased rapidly in the past decade.
It's worth noting, however, that while research on e-cigarettes is growing, heated cigarettes are still lagging behind the research, in part because of the small number of smokers worldwide. For example, in a PubMed search, only 35 articles in 2018 included the search term “IQOS” in the title, and by August 2019 only 20 articles.
Use PubMed, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's (NLM) medical information database, and search for the number of articles with the search term “e-cigarettes” in the title and keywords.
The results show that from 2010 to 2013, the number of papers in the e-cigarette search term was in double digits. However, since 2014, it has more than tripled, and is more than 10 times higher than in 2013 and 2018. The trend is the same when examined in Web of Science, an online database of Thomson Reuters academic journals.Papers in 2010 were less serious about whether e-cigarettes still needed to be regulated or how they differed from traditional cigarettes. However, in 2018, there is a lot of analysis of why e-cigarettes are spreading rapidly to younger generations, examining specific regulatory approaches and case reports of smokers. Among the many research papers on nicotine as an addictive drug, there has been an increase in the past few years. Take a look at the number of articles where “nicotine” made it into the title in the same PubMed, which is about 1.5 times higher in 2018 than it was in 2010.
It's worth noting, however, that while research on e-cigarettes is growing, heated cigarettes are still lagging behind the research, in part because of the small number of smokers worldwide. For example, in a PubMed search, only 35 articles in 2018 included the search term “IQOS” in the title, and by August 2019 only 20 articles.
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