Experts have repeated their backing for e-cigarettes being used as an aid for giving up smoking.
Health organisations around the world have clashed over the merits of the increasingly popular devices.
The World Health Organisation last year called on countries to consider banning them.
But British regulators at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence have said that smokers should be given encouragement if they use them to quit cigarettes.
Yesterday the Denmark-based Cochrane Review backed NICE and said it stood by its 2014 advice that e-cigarettes can help smokers give up.
The review said that in two years there have been no new randomised controlled trials on the subject.
But there are a "large number" of studies under way, it said.
The Review says that two years ago there were two randomise controlled studies involving some 600 people. This found that e-cigarettes with nicotine increased the chance of a user stopping smoking within 12 months.
It says there are no serious side-effects although recent studies have found some throat and mouth irritation.
Researcher Jamie Hartmann-Boyce said: "The randomised evidence on smoking cessation is unchanged since the last version of the Review. We are encouraged to find many studies are now underway, particularly as electronic cigarettes are an evolving technology.
"Since the last version of the Review, 11 new observational and uncontrolled studies have been published. In terms of quitting, these can’t provide the same information we get from randomised controlled trials, but they contribute further information on the side effects of using electronic cigarettes to quit smoking.
"None detected any serious side effects, but longer term data are needed."
Interventions to reduce harm from continued tobacco use. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 13 October 2016 [abstract]
Leave a Reply