Tobacco & Marijuana
Quitting smoking has favorable metabolic effects
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People who quit smoking have improved metabolic effects, a new study finds. The results will be presented in a poster Thursday, March 5, at ENDO 2015, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society in San Diego.
“In general, people think that when they stop smoking, they are going to gain weight and their diabetes and insulin resistance are going to get worse, but we didn’t find that,” said principal investigator Theodore C. Friedman, MS, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Internal Medicine of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, California. “Our study showed that insulin resistance was basically the same and some of the fat redistribution seemed to be better. Initially fat might have gone into the abdomen, but later, it went back to the thigh, which is more benign.”
In this study, researchers enrolled healthy, ½-to-2 pack-per-day smokers into an 8-week smoking cessation program of behavioral counseling plus oral bupropion (Phase I), followed by a 16-week maintenance period without counseling or bupropion wherein subjects either remained abstinent or naturally resumed/increased smoking (Phase II).
Before and after Phase 1, the researchers measured the subjects’ number of cigarettes per day, breath carbon monoxide, urine nicotine metabolites, weight, body composition, fat distribution, free fatty acids, and rate of glucose release from the liver and overall glucose utilization.
Opioid prescription is on the increase
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More and more opioids are being prescribed for pain relief in Germany. This is the conclusion arrived at by Ingrid Schubert, Peter Ihle, and Rainer Sabatowski, whose study of a sample of inhabitants of the state of Hesse with health insurance from a large statutory provider is published in the latest issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2013; 110(4): 45-51).
Behind this study lies the intention to improve pain treatment with opioids, particularly for patients with cancer. Prescribing too little results in inadequate alleviation of pain, while supplying too much entails the risk of addiction, especially in patients who do not have cancer.
The proportion of persons in the sample who received opioids increased between 2000 and 2010, and so did the number of daily doses per recipient. 3.7 million inhabitants of Germany received opioids in 2010, a million more than in 2000. The frequency of prescription of WHO step 3 opioids increased - most of all in noncancer patients, in spite of the lack of good evidence for this indication.
Could smoking pot raise testicular cancer risk?
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Do men who frequently smoke pot have a higher risk of testicular cancer than those who do not? It’s possible, according to a new study. However, the researchers say the link is currently a “hypothesis” that needs further testing.
Testicular cancer is relatively rare - a man’s lifetime chance of developing the disease is about 1 in 300 (and dying of it is about 1 in 5,000). Frequent or long-term marijuana smokers could have about double the risk of nonusers, according to the report in the February 9 issue of the journal Cancer.
In the study, a team led by Dr. Janet R. Daling of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, interviewed 369 men between the ages of 18 and 44 from the Seattle-Puget Sound area whose testicular cancer had been diagnosed. They compared those men with 979 men who lived in the same area, but did not have cancer.
Popular kids in US and Mexico more likely to smoke, USC studies show
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Be warned, popularity may cause lung cancer, heart disease, and emphysema.
New research from the University of Southern California (USC) and University of Texas finds that popular students in seven Southern California high schools are more likely to smoke cigarettes than their less popular counterparts.
The study, which appears online this week in the Journal of Adolescent Health, confirms trends observed in previous USC-led studies of students in the sixth through 12th grades across the United States and in Mexico.
“That we’re still seeing this association more than 10 years later, despite marginal declines in smoking, suggests that popularity is a strong predictor of smoking behavior,” said Thomas W. Valente, Ph.D., professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and lead author of three prior studies on the subject.
Continued Smoking Can Spread Cancer
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Cigarette smoke cannot only cause cancer, but it’s also responsible for the spread of it, according to research by UC Merced biochemistry Professor Henry Jay Forman.
Forman discovered tobacco smoke activates an enzyme - called Src - that causes cancer cells to spread to other parts of the body. The study will appear in the April 15 edition of Free Radical Biology and Medicine.
Cigarette smoke is the major cause of lung cancer, Forman said, but nearly half of lung cancer patients remain active smokers. Nonetheless, researchers haven’t understood how cigarette smoke causes cancer to metastasize.
The lab was also able to prevent cigarette smoke from activating the enzyme by introducing an antioxidant. Forman’s discovery could prove useful in the fight against cancer, as it creates more understanding on how it spreads and how antioxidants can help combat this.
Majority of fourth graders are exposed to smoke, study finds
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More than 75 percent of fourth-graders in urban and rural settings have measurable levels of a nicotine breakdown product in their saliva that documents their second-hand smoke exposure, researchers report.
A study of 428 fourth graders and 453 parents in seven rural and seven urban Georgia schools also showed that the urban children were more likely to be smokers – 14.9 percent versus 6.6 percent. Additionally urban children have the most exposure to smokers: 79.6 percent versus 75.3 percent, according to findings presented to the 15th World Conference on Tobacco or Health March 20-24 in Singapore.
“It’s bad news,” said Dr. Martha S. Tingen, Co-Director of Georgia Health Sciences University’s Child Health Discovery Institute and Interim Program Leader of the GHSU Cancer Center’s Cancer Prevention and Control Program. “Smoking is one of the major causes of low-birth weight infants, it increases the incidence of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome by 10 times, increases breathing problems, asthma-related hospital admissions, ear and upper-respiratory infections, yet all these kids are living in a smoking environment.”
Republican Cain says ad not promoting smoking
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Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain on Sunday said he was not promoting smoking in an ad that showed his chief of staff puffing on a cigarette.
The ad stirred much debate over what message it was trying to convey. Cain, a non-smoker, appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and said there was no subliminal signal intended.
“One of the themes within this campaign is let Herman be Herman. Mark Block is a smoker and we say let Mark be Mark,” Cain said, referring to his chief of staff. “That’s all we’re trying to say because we believe let people be people. He doesn’t deny that he’s a smoker.”
Fatal Crashes in the U.S.: Fewer Canadian Drivers Under The Influence
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A new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy and Columbia University finds alcohol-related fatal motor vehicle crashes in the U.S. are much lower among drivers with Canadian licenses than drivers with U.S. or Mexican licenses. The prevalence of alcohol involvement in fatal crashes was 27 percent for both U.S. and Mexican drivers, and 11 percent for Canadian drivers. Similarly, alcohol impairment was found in 23 percent of U.S. and Mexican drivers and 8 percent of Canadian drivers involved in a fatal crash. Research from other countries finds foreign drivers are at greater risk of crashes than native drivers. In contrast, this study shows that drivers licensed in Mexico and Canada who were involved in fatal crashes in the U.S. had the same or less alcohol impairment than U.S.-licensed drivers. The report is published in the October issue of Injury Prevention and is available on the journal’s website.
“Our findings were unexpected, partly because the substantial cultural differences between the U.S. and Mexico led us to anticipate differences in alcohol-related crashes,” said lead study author Susan P. Baker, a professor with the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We also anticipated that Canadian drivers in U.S. crashes would be similar to U.S. drivers because the rate of alcohol-related fatal crashes is similar within the two countries.” Together, Mexican and Canadian drivers comprise more than 70 percent of all foreign-licensed drivers involved in fatal crashes in the U.S.
As a possible explanation, the researchers speculate that the less prominent role of alcohol in fatal crashes of Canadian-licensed drivers in the U.S. may suggest that a larger proportion of Canadians were traveling on vacation or business, situations that may be less likely to involve alcohol. Crashes at night (when alcohol is more likely to be involved) were also least common among Canadian-licensed drivers. And finally, it is also possible that Canadians are less likely to drive after drinking.
Smoke from Southeast wildfires is health hazard
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It’s turning into the summer of smoke in parts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
Public health officials in all three states have warned people with chronic respiratory problems or heart and lung disease to stay inside as smoke from wildfires in Florida and Georgia drifts north.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control warned residents of 13 counties of the possible health effects of smoke blowing their way on Tuesday from fires in southern Georgia’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
Varenicline for smoking cessation linked to increased risk of serious harmful cardiac events
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The use of varenicline to stop smoking is associated with a 72% increased risk of a serious adverse cardiovascular event, states an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) .
Heart disease is a common cause of serious illness and death in smokers and is often a reason for people to stop smoking. Varenicline is one of the most commonly used drugs to help people quit smoking worldwide. When varenicline was launched in 2006, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) safety reviewers reported that existing data indicated it could raise the risk of adverse cardiac events. The FDA recently updated the label for Chantix based on a small increased risk of cardiovascular events among smokers with heart disease.
A team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland; the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom; and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, sought to investigate the serious cardiac effects of varenicline in tobacco users (smokers or smokeless tobacco users) compared with placebos in clinical trials. They looked at 14 trials that included 8216 patients (4908 people on varenicline and 3308 taking placebos). All trials except one excluded people with a history of heart disease.
Smoking in combination with immunosuppression poses greater risk for transplant-related carcinoma
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Spanish researchers have found that liver transplant recipients who quit smoking have a lower incidence of smoking-related malignancies (SRM) than patients who keep smoking. In fact, SRMs were identified in 13.5% of deceased patients and smoking was associated with a higher risk of malignancy in this study. Full findings are published in the April issue of Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.
While smoking is a well-known malignancy risk factor both in the general population and in liver transplant recipients, smoking in combination with immunosuppression is presumed to be the main risk factor for transplant-related carcinomas. Several authors have suggested that a longer duration of immunosuppressive treatment or a stronger immunosuppression could be related to a higher risk of malignancy. However, the Spanish researchers failed to find such an association. Rather, they suggest that smoking after transplant which increases the risk, and smoking cessation following transplant surgery which decreases the risk, are more significant indicators.
“Smoking is related to some of the most frequent causes of post-transplant malignancy,” says study leader Dr. J. Ignacio Herrero of the Clínica Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. “We investigated whether the risks of developing malignancies was different in patients who ceased smoking than in patients who maintained smoking after transplantation.” Risk factors of lung, head and neck, esophagus, kidney and urinary tract (other than prostate) cancers after liver transplantation were examined in the present study.
Study shows secondhand smoke a serious health threat to casino workers, patrons
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Hitting the tables could be as risky for your health as it is for your pocketbook, according to new research from Stanford and Tufts showing pervasive secondhand smoke in casinos poses a grave health threat to patrons and employees.
In the study (subscription required), researchers covertly measured pollution levels in 66 casinos, including three smoke-free establishments, in five states. Combining this data with previously published measurements from three other states, the team developed nationwide averages and ranges for pollution levels inside casinos. An article in today’s Stanford Report discusses the findings:
Tobacco and its evil cousin, nicotine? They’re good—as a pesticide!
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Tobacco, used on a small scale as a natural organic pesticide for hundreds of years, is getting new scientific attention as a potential mass-produced alternative to traditional commercial pesticides. That’s the topic of a report in ACS’ bi-weekly journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.
Cedric Briens and colleagues note that concerns about the health risks of tobacco have reduced demand and hurt tobacco farmers in some parts of the world. Scientists are looking for new uses for tobacco. One potential use is as a natural pesticide, due to tobacco’s content of toxic nicotine. For centuries, gardeners have used home-made mixtures of tobacco and water as a natural pesticide to kill insect pests. A “green” pesticide industry based on tobacco could provide additional income for farmers, and as well as a new eco-friendly pest-control agent, the scientists say.
Fines of $7 in “tough” new China anti-smoking rules
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China’s “toughest” ever smoking ban, which aims to stop people lighting up during November’s Asian Games, will carry fines of $7, state media said on Wednesday, a limited deterrent to smokers in one of China’s richest cities.
People found smoking in offices, conference halls, elevators and certain other public spaces will be fined 50 yuan ($7.36), though “businesses not meeting their obligations” will be fined up to 30,000 yuan, the official Xinhua news agency said, calling it “the nation’s toughest smoking ban.”
Guangzhou is one of China’s wealthiest cities, with a per capita GDP of more than $10,000, so individual 50 yuan fines are unlikely to have much impact on most residents unless there are armies of enforcers combing the city.
Quitting smoking may ease stress levels
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Smokers often say they need a cigarette to calm their nerves, but a new study suggests that after a person kicks the habit, chronic stress levels may go down.
The findings, say researchers, should give smokers reassurance that quitting will not deprive them of a valuable stress reliever.
In a study of 469 smokers who tried to quit after being hospitalized for heart disease, the researchers found that those who remained abstinent for a year showed a reduction in their perceived stress levels. In contrast, stress levels were essentially unchanged among heart patients who went back to smoking.
