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  • PMI’s own in vivo clinical data on biomarkers of potential harm in Americans show that IQOS is not detectably different from conventional cigarettes

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PMI’s own in vivo clinical data on biomarkers of potential harm in Americans show that IQOS is not detectably different from conventional cigarettes
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  • Published on: 22 October 2018
    Biomarkers of harm -- not exposure -- are key to reduced risk claims

    NOT PEER REVIEWED

    The "serious criticism" that Mr. Bates refers to is from him (on another website).

    In order for the FDA to issue an order allowing Philip Morris International to market IQOS in the United States as a reduced risk tobacco product, the law required that, among other things, FDA "determines that the applicant [PMI] has demonstrated that such product [IQOS], as it is actually used by consumers will significantly reduce harm and the risk of tobacco- related disease to individual tobacco users."

    That is why PMI provided the information of biomarkers of potential harm to the FDA. and how they compare to values observed in smokers. My paper shows that, using PMI's own data, IQOS will not significantly reduce risk to consumers compared with cigarettes.

    Bates ignores this reality and instead talks about biomarkers of exposure, which is a different question.

    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.
  • Published on: 22 October 2018
    This study has already been severely criticised

    NOT PEER REVIEWED The main problem with the claim of equivalence between smoking and switching to iQOS is that some biomarkers of potential harm change over a much longer timeframe than the 90-day duration of the trials. Biomarkers of potential harm can reflect years of accumulated physical changes arising from smoking and only improve slowly after smoking cessation. The trial did, of course, pick up very substantial reductions in biomarkers of exposure, which would, over time, emerge as reductions in biomarkers of potential harm.
    This would have been apparent and obvious to readers if the paper had also shown the results for the third arm of the trial, smoking abstinence. The biomarkers of potential harm for smoking abstinence and for switching to iQOS are quite similar in this trial. This is a curious omission. Furthermore, biomarkers of exposure turned quite similar for both switching to iQOS and smoking abstinence - both are greatly reduced, which is an encouraging finding about the iQOS product.
    It is unlikely that anyone would argue against smoking abstinence on the basis of the biomarkers of potential harm in the original PMI study. However, the author has selectively used the iQOS data from these trials without the context of the smoking abstinence data to oppose the Modified Tobacco Product Application that PMI made to the U.S. FDA - the author's attempt to block this reduced-risk product from entering the US market.
    ...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.