User:Jasmine3093/sandbox

Signs and symptoms

Commonly reported symptoms include shortness of breath, cough, fatigue, body aches, fever, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Additional symptoms can include chest pain, abdominal pain, chills, or weight loss. Symptoms can initially mimic common pulmonary diagnoses like pneumonia, but individuals typically do not respond to antibiotic therapy. Individuals typically present for care within a few days to weeks of symptom onset. At the time of hospital presentation, the individual is often hypoxic and meets systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) criteria, including high fever. Physical exam can reveal tachycardia and tachypnea. In some cases, they have progressive respiratory failure, leading to intubation. Several affected individuals have needed to be placed in the ICU and undergo mechanical ventilation. Time to recovery for hospital discharge has been from days to weeks.

Mechanism

Schematic of a typical e-cigarette with a cartridge containing nicotine dissolved in propylene glycol.

Vaping refers to the increasingly popular practice of inhaling aerosol (vapor) from an electronic cigarette device, which works by heating a liquid that can contain nicotine, cannabis, or other drugs. The long-term health impacts of vaping are unknown. Some individuals also use a different type of device to heat and extract cannabinoids for inhalation in a process called "dabbing." Both vaping and dabbing have been associated with VAPI. Most individuals report vaping the cannabis compounds THC and/or CBD, and some also report vaping nicotine products. A smaller group reported using nicotine alone. On October 4, 2019, the CDC reported that the cause of the lung illnesses is unknown but it might be related to prefilled THC cartridges.