Feature Channels: Smoking

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While previous studies have found that electronic cigarettes emit toxic compounds, a new study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has pinpointed the source of these emissions and shown how factors such as the temperature, type, and age of the device play a role in emission levels, information that could be valuable to both manufacturers and regulators seeking to minimize the health impacts of these increasingly popular devices.

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New study of patients who survive Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) finds their subsequent quality of life has more to do with lifestyle factors than how sick they were in the hospital.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio – Raising the national minimum age to buy cigarettes to 21 would save lives by preventing adolescents from ever taking up smoking, a new report suggests. The minimum age to buy tobacco products in most of the country is 18. In their analysis, Ohio State University public health experts detail how raising the minimum tobacco sales age would be effective in improving health and note the economic consequences to retailers would be minimal.

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Click here to go directly to the Cardiovascular Health News Source

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A study by researchers at North Dakota State University, Fargo, found that 51 percent of labels on e-cigarette liquid nicotine containers from 16 North Dakota stores don’t accurately reflect the levels of nicotine found in the products. In one instance, actual nicotine levels were 172 percent higher than labeled. The majority of e-cigarette liquid containers also did not provide child-resistant packaging.

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Despite a recent ban on the sale of menthol cigarettes in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Nova Scotia, cigarettes made with similar coloring and marketed as having the same taste are still being sold, new research from the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests.

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A modeling study by top tobacco control experts finds that e-cigarettes are likely to provide public health benefits based on “conservative estimates” of the likely uptake of vaping and smoking by adolescents and young adults. If used instead of smoking, e-cigarettes provide the potential to reduce harm and improve public health, says the lead author.

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Researchers point out in a commentary published in today’s Annals of Family Medicine that existing treatments are more effective than e-cigarettes to help people quit smoking, there are professional ethics concerns about providers who recommend them, and there is no strong evidence that e-cigarettes are safe.

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TAMPA, Fla. – The use of electronic cigarettes (“e-cigarettes”) has increased dramatically in recent years.  The majority of new “vapers” were already cigarette smokers.  To date, little is known about how e-cigarette use changes over time or how it affects the use of traditional cigarettes.  Such information would be valuable for understanding the long-term impact of e-cigarettes and for determining whether e-cigarettes help or hinder smoking cessation.

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The nectar of tree tobacco (Nicotiana glauca) is composed of a particularly bitter combination of nicotine and anabasine – and yet sunbirds never stop visiting the plant. A new study conducted at the University of Haifa – Oranim Campus points to the reason why: the mixture of chemicals in the nectar affects the sunbird’s memory

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BUFFALO, N.Y. — Panel's recommendations are not warranted until long-term studies on representative samples of smokers show this is good for public health overall, Lynn T. Kozlowski writes in new journal paper.

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Electronic cigarette makers and sellers are making all kinds of health claims, many of which likely won’t stand up to scrutiny under recently announced FDA regulation, a new study has found.

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Free radicals can reach the endoplasmic reticulum, a cellular organelle that is critical in manufacturing and transporting fats, steroids, hormones and various proteins, and alter its function by oxidizing and damaging its most abundant and crucial to protein folding chaperone, Protein Disulfide Isomerase (PDI).

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Smoking cigarettes alters dozens of genes important for immune defense in epithelial cells in the respiratory tract. These changes likely increase the risk of bacterial infections, viruses, and inflammation. Now, scientists report that e-cigarette use alters hundreds of genes.

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A US Fire Administration 2014 report says there are more than 2.5 million American users of the devices, and cites 25 incidents of e-cig or vape device explosions between 2009 and 2014. UAB surgeon Chandra Ellis, M.D., has operated on two patients injured by vape explosions, and treated five in clinic and offers some words of caution on the use of vape pens.

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Switching to reduced nicotine content (RNC) cigarettes may not necessarily reduce harm to smokers, according to new research conducted by Penn’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Nicotine Addiction (CIRNA). Smokers also tend to ignore cautions contained in warning box labels, the authors found in a separate study. The study results were published recently in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention and Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

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Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and East Carolina University report in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that in all nine regions of the country, a majority of adults supported increasing the minimum legal age for tobacco product sales.

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Women who want to quit smoking may have better success by carefully timing their quit date with optimal days within their menstrual cycle, according to a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The results, published online this month in Biology of Sex Differences, were also presented at the annual meeting of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences (OSSD), held at Penn.

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UofL dental researcher explores microbiological mechanisms as World Health Organization urges for a day of abstinence from tobacco use on May 31

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On May 31st, the World Health Organization hopes to spur the nearly one billion smokers worldwide to put down their cigarettes for World No Tobacco Day. While this annual event generates media attention and is a potential starting point for many quit attempts, without a sustained effort these smokers will likely be puffing away again in a matter of weeks. Researchers say that one way to keep the momentum going after this once-a-year push to get smokers’ attention, is to use every Monday as a weekly opportunity to support smokers in their efforts to quit and stay quit.

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It's time to modernize the decades-old tobacco control strategies that rely on an “all or nothing” approach and which are confusing the public, Lynn Kozlowski and David Abrams write.

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Exposure to e-cigarette marketing messages is significantly associated with e-cigarette use among middle school and high school students, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

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A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that smokers, who wouldn’t typically be diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, are still showing symptoms consistent with the diagnosis.

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Depressed Moms Not ‘in Sync’ with Their Kids, Children with ADHD Sleep Both Poorly and Less, Yeast Infection Linked to Mental Illness, and more in the Mental Health News Source

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This study is the first to determine the adverse health effects of e-cig use on oral health. The outcomes will aid the NIH-NIDCR in evaluating the oral health risk and the regulation of e-cigs.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Native American adolescents have higher rates of cigarette smoking than other racial or ethnic groups. New research from the University of Missouri on the smoking habits of Native American adolescents finds that family warmth and support, as well as participation in school activities, can play a role in tobacco prevention.

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Most smokers who have tried electronic cigarettes have rejected them as less satisfying than regular cigarettes, reducing their potential to be a “disruptive technology” that could help a significant number of smokers to quit, according to a recent study by a team of researchers at the Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS) at Georgia State University.

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UB addictions expert Nancy Campbell-Heider calls on clinicians to screen for vaping among teens, who are either uninformed or misinformed about the dangers and risks associated with electronic cigarettes.

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BUFFALO, N.Y. – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s long-awaited ruling Thursday establishing new regulations for e-cigarettes and other tobacco products will help better inform consumers, but there is a down side, according to University at Buffalo tobacco expert Gary Giovino. “There is concern that these regulations will put e-cigarettes back under the control of the multinational tobacco corporations.

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RTI International is at the forefront of e-cigarette research and has conducted studies on e-cigarette contents, emissions, secondhand exposure, and the effects of e-cigarette advertising on teens.

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The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center fully supports new rules issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today to extend federal regulatory authority to all tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes, cigars, hookah and other previously unregulated tobacco products.

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Rebecca S. Williams, a researcher with the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and a leading expert in the study of Internet tobacco sales, including e-cigarettes, applauds the FDA’s ruling.

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RTI International is hosting the Emerging Science in State and Community Tobacco Control Policy and Practice Forum that will explore critical needs in state and community tobacco control at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., May 4.

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Seven top international tobacco control experts are prompting regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to have a broad “open-minded” perspective when it comes to regulating vaporized nicotine products, especially e-cigarettes.

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Compared to the nicotine patch and a placebo, the smoking cessation aids varenicline (marketed as Chantix in the U.S.) and bupropion (Zyban) do not show a significant increase in neuropsychiatric adverse events, reports an international team of researchers in a study published online April 22 in the journal The Lancet.

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.Eric Woodcock, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences in Wayne State University‘s School of Medicine, has been awarded a two-year, $76,000 predoctoral fellowship from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) of the National Institutes of Health for the project,“Neuropharmacological investigation of frontostriatal network function and nicotine seeking behavior in current smokers.“

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Watercress extract taken multiple times a day significantly inhibits the activation of a tobacco-derived carcinogen in cigarette smokers, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI), partner with UPMC CancerCenter, demonstrated in a phase II clinical trial presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

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BUFFALO, N.Y. — When it comes to learning about the differences in risk among certain types of nicotine products, many government websites are actually misleading or under-informing the public, according to two researchers who analyzed the content of numerous health websites.