ArticleHealth science reports2026
Prescribed Medication Burden by Tobacco Smoking and E-Cigarette Use Status.
Article in Health science reports, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Cigarette smoking, e-cigarette use, and hypertension: a population-based cross-sectional study.Journal of human hypertension · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Purpose: Tobacco smoking is a major driver of chronic disease, and e-cigarette use is increasingly common, yet their associations with prescribed medication burden remain unclear. Methods: We analysed data from 1657 adults aged ≥ 16 years who completed a nurse visit in the Health Survey for England 2021. Smoking and e-cigarette status were categorized into four mutually exclusive groups: never users, current smokers, current exclusive e-cigarette users, and ex-smokers. Prescribed medication use in the past 7 days was verified by nurses and grouped into seven BNF-based therapeutic categories: cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, pain and anti-inflammatory, gastrointestinal, mental health, and anti-infectives. Overall, medication burden was categorized as none, one, two, or three or more prescribed medicines. Generalized ordered logistic regression estimated associations with overall burden, and Firth penalized logistic regression examined therapeutic categories, adjusting for age, sex, education, and area-level deprivation. Sensitivity analyses restricted the sample to adults aged ≥ 45 years. Results: Ex-smokers reported the highest medication burden, with 20.3% prescribed three or more medicines compared with 8.6% of never users, 10.9% of current smokers, and 12.2% of current e-cigarette users ( Conclusions: Ex-smokers had the highest medication burden compared with never users, which may partly reflect reverse causation, whereby illness and associated treatment prompt smoking cessation, though residual effects of prior smoking cannot be excluded. Current smokers showed no significant excess burden, possibly due to a "healthy smoker" effect, and e-cigarette use was not associated with overall burden compared with never users, although it was linked to greater use of pain and anti-inflammatory medicines.
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Registered trials
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