Tobacco Research
24 Mar E-Cigarettes Did Not Increase Chance of Quitting Smoking
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Pamela Ling, MD MPH
Associate Professor, Department of Medicine
Director, Tobacco Control Policy Fellowship
Center for Tobacco Research and Education
University of California San Francisco
San Francisco, CA 94143-1390
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Ling: We followed a sample of smokers from a nationally representative panel for one year. We found that there was no difference in the rate of quitting between smokers who used an e-cigarette and those who did not. Put another way, smokers who had used e-cigarettes at the beginning of the study were equally likely to have quit smoking one year later as those who did not use e-cigarettes. There was no relationship between e-cigarette use and quitting even after taking into account measures of tobacco dependence (number of cigarettes smoked per day, how early in the day a smoker has his first cigarette) and intention to quit smoking.
12 Mar E-Cigarettes Use By Adolescents May Lead to Heavier Smoking
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Lauren Dutra, ScD
Postdoctoral Scholar, UCSF School of Medicine
Cardiovascular Research Institute
San Francisco, CA 94143
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Answer: Middle and high school students who used e-cigarettes were more likely to smoke tobacco cigarettes. They were also more likely to progress from experimenting with tobacco cigarettes to becoming regular smokers.
Teen smokers who used e-cigarettes were more likely to be planning to quit in the next year and less likely to have abstained from smoking recently, compared to smokers who had never used e-cigarettes. They were also more likely to be heavier smokers (smoke more cigarettes per day) than those who had never tried e-cigarettes, that being said there are eliquids available that have no nicotine content whatsoever and these are therefore a much healthier option, you can see a wide variety of these at Gourmet E-Liquid.
23 Feb COPD: Risk from Chinese WaterPipe Smoking
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Chunxue Bai, MD & PhD
Director, Shanghai Respiratory Research Institute
Professor of Medicine, Chairman, Shanghai Leading academic discipline
Chair, Chinese Alliance against Lung Cancer
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Bai: Recently, we found a dilemma phenomenon that the incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer has remained high in southwest China despite the 1976 National Stove Improvement Program for indoor air quality.
However, little information is known to the public about a regional endemic related to Chinese waterpipe smoking, which is different from the Arabic waterpipe. The Chinese waterpipe has been traditionally misconceived as less harmful for three reasons:
- (1) no charcoal was used in contrast to the Arabic waterpipe,
- (2) tobacco smoke passed through the water as opposed to cigarette smoking and
- (3) smoking through a large volume waterpipe could “improve lung function.”
14 Feb Mental Health Improved with Smoking Cessation
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Gemma Taylor MSc MBPsS
Doctoral Researcher
and
Paul Aveyard and PhD MRCP MRCGP FFPG
Professor of Behavioral Medicine
Fellow of Wolson College
Primary Care Clinical Sciences
The University of Birmingham
Birmingham United Kingdom
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Answer: Smoking cessation is associated with improvements in mental health compared with continuing to smoke. The effect sizes seem as large for those with psychiatric disorders as those without and are equal or larger to effect estimates of antidepressant treatment for mood and anxiety disorders.
13 Feb Tobacco Appeal Would Be Reduced By Standarized Packaging
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr Jenny L Hatchard
University of Bath and UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Hatchard: Our study found that global tobacco companies’ claims that standardised packaging ‘won’t work’ should be viewed sceptically.
The aim of standardised packaging, with no logos, brand imagery, symbols, or promotional text, is to restrict the already limited opportunities that tobacco companies have to market their products, and deter people from starting smoking. It was introduced in Australia in 2012 and the UK Government is currently considering following suit.
We analysed the evidence cited by four global tobacco companies in their lengthy responses (1521 pages in total) to a recent UK Government consultation on standardised packaging for cigarettes.
12 Feb Breast Cancer Risk Increased by Smoking
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Masaaki Kawai MD, PhD Division of Public Health Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Seattle, Washington MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Answer: Ever-smokers had a 1.3-fold increased risk of breast cancer. They also had a 1.4-fold increased risk of ER-positive breast cancer. Current/recent smokers with a 10 pack-year history of smoking had a 1.6-fold increased risk of ER-positive breast cancer.14 Jan Cataracts: Quitting Smoking Decreases Risk
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Birgitta Ejdervik Lindblad, MD PhD Department of Ophthalmology Örebro University Hospital Örebro, Sweden MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Answer: We have investigated the association between smoking cessation and risk of having a cataract extraction among 44 371 Swedish men aged 45-79 years. During 12 years of follow up we identified 5713 incident cases of cataract extraction. Smoking cessation significantly decreased the risk with time. Men who currently smoked more than 15 cigarettes per day had a 42 % increased risk of cataract extraction compared with men who had never smoked. More than 20 years since quitting smoking, men who had smoked more than 15 cigarettes per day had a 21% increased risk of having a cataract extraction compared with men who had never smoked. The effect of smoking cessation was observed earlier among men who smoked less than 15 cigarettes per day but more than 2 decades since smoking cessation the risk had not decreased to the level of never smokers.29 Oct Smoking: Monday Most Popular Day to Quit
MediclResearch.com Interview with: John W. Ayers, PhD, MA Graduate School of Public Health San Diego State University, San Diego, California MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Ayers: Our study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Internal Medicine was the first to describe daily rhythms in health behaviors. Because trends in quitting contemplations are usually described annually using telephone surveys, we had to use a novel data source that could capture daily patterns. By monitoring aggregate Internet search queries we can see precisely what the population is thinking about by the content of their queries and that the population is engaged in the issue by searching. We therefore analyzed daily search volumes for smoking cessation queries (e.g., "quit smoking") in six languages across the entire globe. We found that people search about quitting smoking more often early in the week, with the highest query volumes on Mondays, using a daily measure representing the proportion of quit smoking searches to all searches. This pattern was consistent across all six languages, suggesting a global predisposition to thinking about quitting smoking early in the week, particularly on Mondays. English searches, for example, showed Monday query volumes were 11 percent greater than on Wednesdays, 67 percent greater than on Fridays, and 145 percent greater than on Saturdays. In total for all six languages, Monday query volumes were 25 percent higher than the combined mean number of searches for Tuesday through Sunday. Practically these findings are very meaningful. For example, in English alone there are about 150,000 more quit smoking queries on Monday than on a typical day; about 8,000,000 over an entire year.20 Sep Smoking Cessation and Electronic Cigarettes
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Chris Bullen MBChB MPH PhD FAFPM FNZCPHM
Director
School of Population Health, The University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019 Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Co-Director of the NZ Tobacco Control Research Turanga: A national programme of research to inform rapid smoking prevalence reduction.
Web: http://www.turanga.org.nz/
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Bullen:
- E-cigarettes, with or without nicotine, were modestly effective at helping smokers to quit, with similar levels of abstinence as with nicotine patches, and few adverse events.
- ?At 6 months, verified abstinence was 7·3% with nicotine e-cigarettes, 5·8% with patches, and 4·1% with placebo e-cigarettes. However, there was insufficient statistical power to conclude superiority of nicotine e-cigarettes to patches or to placebo e-cigarettes.
- No significant differences in rates of adverse events occurrence were found between the groups.
- E-cigarettes, like the vapes found at MagicVaporizers, were very popular throughout the trial, with almost 90% of users stating they would recommend them to a friend trying to quit smoking.
06 Aug Maternal Grandmother’s Smoking Affects Pediatric Asthma, Especially in Boys
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Virender Rehan, MD Professor of Pediatrics Chief, Division of Neonatology Director, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Director, Neonatal-Perinatal Fellowship Training Program Co-Director Perinatal Research Center Harbor UCLA Medical Center, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Torrance, CA, 90502 MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Rehan: The main findings of the study include the likelihood of transmission of asthma to third generation offspring following maternal smoking during pregnancy even when child’s mother didn’t smoke. And these effects seem to be more profound in the upper airways of males compared to that in females.03 Aug After Angioplasty: Quit Smoking, Live Longer
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. R.T. van Domburg Clinical epidemiologist, Associate Professor Erasmus Medical Center Department of Cardiology Ba561 ‘s-Gravendijkwal 230 3015 CE Rotterdam MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of your study? Answer: We collected data from the first patients who underwent coronary angioplasty in the early 1980s and followed them for 25 to 30 years. We found that patients who were able to quit smoking in the year following their PCI lived on average more than two years longer than those who continued to smoke.31 Jul Lung Cancer: Screening with Low-Dose CT
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Linda L. Humphrey, M.D., M.P.H. Professor of Medicine Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology and Public Health for Oregon Health & Science University;Associate Chief of Medicine at the Portland VA Medical Center Dr. Humphrey comments on this important study on Screening for Lung Cancer With Low-Dose Computed Tomography: Lung cancer is the 3rd leading cause of cancer in the United States and the leading cause of cancer related death. It is estimated that in 2012 there were 226,160 cases of lung cancer and 160, 340 lung cancer related death in the US. In addition, lung cancer is the leading cause of years of life lost to cancer. Cigarette smoking is by far the leading cause of lung cancer in the US and while many people have quit smoking, data in the US indicate that 37% of adults are either current or former smokers and at risk of lung cancer.16 Apr Prevalence of a Healthy Lifestyle Among Individuals With Cardiovascular Disease in High-, Middle- and Low-Income CountriesThe Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) Study
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in Author Interviews, Exercise - Fitness, Heart Disease, JAMA, Smoking, Tobacco Research
MedicalResearch.com Author Interview with Dr. Koon Teo, MB, PhD
Population Health Research Institute, Hamilton Health Sciences,
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Teo: In this study we examined the prevalence of smoking cessation or avoidance, eating a healthy diet and undertaking regular physical activities in nearly 8000 individuals who had previously experienced a coronary heart disease event or stroke, on average 5 years after their events. The individuals were recruited from over 600 communities in 17 countries with varying incomes and economic development. We found that although these healthy lifestyle activities could reduce the risk of further heart or stroke events, about one fifth of individuals continued to smoke, only one third undertook regular leisure or work related physical activities and about two fifths ate a healthy diet.
01 Apr Time to First Cigarette and 4-(Methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-Pyridyl)-1-Butanol (NNAL) Levels in Adult Smokers; National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2007–2010
MedicalResearch.com Author Interview:
Dr. Steven A. Branstetter, PhD
The Pennsylvania State University, 315 E. HHD, University Park, PA 16810.
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Branstetter: This study demonstrated that the time to the first cigarette of the day after waking is associated with increased levels of a NNAL, a metabolite of a powerful tobacco-specific carcinogen, NNK -- even after controlling for the total number of cigarettes smoked per day.
For years, the time to the first cigarette of the day after waking was one of several questions assessing nicotine dependence on the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND), the gold standard questionnaire int he field. Over time, it was found that much of the predictive validity of the FTND was due to the time to first cigarette item. Researchers have found that single time to first cigarette item was highly correlated with other measures of nicotine dependence, and was predictive of more difficulty quitting smoking and increased intake of nicotine. Our current study demonstrates that this behavioral measure, is predictive of exposure to the cancer-causing components of cigarettes, regardless of the total number of cigarettes smoked per day. The results suggest that researchers, clinicians and smokers can assess the level of nicotine dependence and potential cancer risk by looking at the time to the first cigarette of the day after waking.
15 Mar U.S. Tobacco-Control Efforts Prevented Nearly 800,000 Lung Cancer Deaths Between 1975 and 2000
Newswise — SEATTLE – Declines in cigarette smoking among Americans since the mid-1950s – particularly since tobacco-control policies and interventions were implemented after the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health was released in 1964 – prevented nearly 800,000 lung cancer deaths between 1975 and 2000, according to a...
05 Sep Living with a smoker increases absenteeism in school children
Children who live in households where they are exposed to tobacco smoke miss more days of school than do children living in smoke-free homes, a new nationwide study confirms. The report from investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) – which finds these children have higher rates of respiratory illnesses that...
01 Aug Young African American Men and “alternative” Tobacco Products
Alexandria, VA — Tobacco related disease is a primary source of mortality for African American men. Recent studies suggest that "alternative" tobacco products may have supplanted cigarettes as the most common products used by young African Americans, according to new research published in the August 2011 issue of Otolaryngology –...