Victor Martinez-Loredo
Victor Martinez-Loredo1, Alba González-Roz2, James Murphy3, James MacKillop4. 1University of Zaragoza, Spain; 2University of Balearic Island, Spain; 3University of Memphis, United States; 4McMaster University, Canada
Although most e-cig users are dual users, whose primary motivation is to quit, a significant proportion of those who quit smoking maintain the e-cig use at long-term. The objective was to identify patterns of cigarette and e-cig users in two samples from US and Canada during 2 years. 1002 young adults (58.5% females) completed a set of questions regarding socio-demographics, tobacco and e-cig use. A latent transitional analysis was performed to obtain subgroups engaging in different patterns of cigarette and e-cig use across four assessments. Results were compared based on participants’ sex. Four classes were found: 1) exclusive e-cig users, dual users, non-users, and exclusive cigarette users. Females were constantly underrepresented in the first class and overrepresented in the third one. At T1 they were also less likely to be dual users. While 54% of males (M) exclusive e-cig users at T1 quit at T2, 80% of females (F) did so. Around 28% and 24% of dual users transited to exclusive e-cig and cigarette users, respectively; being females more likely to show the latter transition. 39% vs 28% male dual users transiting between T2-T3 moved toward exclusive e-cig use. From T3-T4, 33%(M) vs 38%(F) e-cig users quit. Most exclusive e-cig users quit in the first eight months, especially among females. A third of male dual users transited to e-cig use and a quarter of female dual users did so to cigarette use. The most common pattern was to transit from dual to non-use through exclusive e-cig use.