An electronic cigarette, or vape, is a device that mimics tobacco smoking and consists of an atomizer, battery, and liquid container.
Rather than tobacco, they inhale and exhale vapour. Vaping is often referred to as using an e-cigarette.
Turkish scientists conducted research on rats to find out the effect of smoking on sexual health.
Researchers observed that exposing rats to cigarette smoke and e-cigarette vapours lowers the size of their testicles. They also discovered stress indicators in the blood and vaginal tract.
The rats were exposed to cigarette smoke or e-cigarette vapours twice a day for one hour each time. And the control group received neither.
According to a study published in the Spanish-language journal Revista Internacional de Andrología, traditional cigarettes are significantly more harmful. Rats exposed to cigarette smoke experienced the lowest sperm count among the three groups studied.
The rats exposed to cigarette smoke had smaller and lighter testes than the e-cigarette and unexposed groups. The study suggests that e-cigarette liquid could increase oxidative stress and cause morphological changes in the testicle.
Danish scientists conducted a 2020 study on 2,000 men, finding that daily e-cigarette users had a lower total sperm count compared to non-vapers. More research on this is still necessary.