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Teenagers and young adults who use e-cigarettes are more likely to move on to traditional cigarettes, according to a small study sponsored by the US National Cancer Institute.

The study found that 37.5 per cent of e-cigarette users had begun smoking after a year, compared to 9.6 per cent of non e-cigarette users. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center followed 694 people aged 16-26 who said they definitely had no intention of smoking cigarettes. Of those, 16 were using e-cigarettes. After a year, six of the e-cigarette users had begun smoking, compared with 65 of those who were nonn-users at the start of the trial. Another five e-cigarette users were no longer certain that they would not smoke cigarettes, compared to 63 of those who were not using e-cigarettes at the beginning.

The results, which were published online on Tuesday, are scheduled for publication in the November edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics. The study may inform the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's is current considerations on how to regulate e-cigarettes. 

This study did not address whether the e-cigarette users who had started smoking were doing so on a routine basis, whether they were using both e-cigarettes and cigarettes, or simply experimenting. The authors attempted to adjust for variables that could have accounted for the progression of some e-cigarette users to smoking.

They found that people who were using e-cigarettes at the start of the study were more likely to engage in sensation-seeking behavior, and may have been more likely to take up smoking anyway. But even adjusting for sensation-seeking tendencies, the association between e-cigarette use and progression towards smoking remained.