[Reblog] Clearing the air on a WHO study

From the 17 July 2014 Association of Health Care Journalists post

Last week, I encountered yet another example of why it’s so important to always read the whole study — not just the press release. In this case, it was actually a report, not a study. A press release from Alzheimer’s International with the somewhat misleading headline, “Smoking Increases Risk Of Dementia” arrived in my inbox, citing a new World Health Organization report that put smokers at a 45% higher risk for developing the disease than non-smokers.

…

 

It’s a good reminder that regardless of the reputation of the organization or institution issuing a report, study or press release, read the source information yourself. You never know what you may find.

WHO (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Odds of Quitting Smoking May Be Clear on Scans

Odds of Quitting Smoking May Be Clear on Scans

Activity in front part of brain can predict behavior, researchers say

From the January 31, 2011 Health Day news item by Robert Preidt

MONDAY, Jan. 31 (HealthDay News) — Brain scans can predict a smoker’s chances of being able to quit, according to a new study.

It included 28 heavy smokers recruited from a smoking cessation program. Functional MRI was used to monitor the participants’ brain activity as they watched television ads meant to help people quit smoking.

The researchers contacted the participants one month later and found that they were smoking an average of five cigarettes a day, compared with an average of 21 a day at the start of the study.

But there was considerable variation in how successful individual participants were in reducing their smoking. The researchers found that a reaction in an area of the brain, called the medial prefrontal cortex, while watching the quit-smoking ads was linked to reductions in smoking during the month after the brain scan.

Previous research by the same team suggested that activity in the prefrontal cortex is predictive of behavior change.

In the new study, published in the current issue of Health Psychology,** “we targeted smokers who were already taking action to quit, and we found that neural activity can predict behavior change, above and beyond people’s own assessment of how likely they are to succeed,” study author Emily Falk, director of the Communication Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and Department of Communication Studies, said in a university news release.

“These results bring us one step closer to the ability to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to select the messages that are most likely to affect behavior change both at the individual and population levels,” Falk said. “It seems that our brain activity may provide information that introspection does not.”

SOURCE: University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, news release, Jan. 31, 2011

** For suggestions on how to get this article for free or at low cost, click here

 

 

Secondhand smoke laws may reduce childhood ear infections

Secondhand smoke laws may reduce childhood ear infections

From a January 26, 2011 Eureka news alert

Boston, MA — Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers and colleagues from Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society have found that a reduction in secondhand smoking in American homes was associated with fewer cases of otitis media, the scientific name for middle ear infection. The study appears on January 26, 2011, as an online first article on the website of the journal Tobacco Control.

“Our study is the first to demonstrate the public health benefits to children of the increase in smoke-free homes across the nation. It also is the first study to quantify over the past 13 years a reversal in what had been a long-term increasing trend in middle ear infections among children,” said lead author Hillel Alpert, research scientist in HSPH’s Department of Society, Human Development, and Health. “If parents avoid smoking at home, they can protect their children from the disease that is the most common cause of visits to physicians and hospitals for medical care,” he said.

Secondhand smoke (smoke from a burning cigarette combined with smoke exhaled by a smoker) has been shown to increase the level of unhealthy particles in the air, including nicotine and other toxins. In 2006 the U.S. Surgeon General stated that enough evidence existed to suggest a link between parents’ smoking and children’s ear infections.

Otitis media is the leading reason for visits to medical practices and hospitals among U.S. children, with an annual estimated economic burden of $3 billion to $5 billion. Children’s visits for otitis media increased steadily from 9.9 million in 1975 to 24.5 million visits in 1990. However, the researchers found the average annual number of outpatient visits for otitis media in children aged 6 years and younger dropped 5%, and hospital discharges fell by 10% per year from 1993 to 2006. (The researchers note that other factors may have contributed to the decline, including a pneumonia vaccine that was introduced in 2000.)

To determine the number of smoke-free households, the researchers used data from the National Cancer Institute‘s Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey. They found voluntary no-smoking rules in households nearly doubled from 45% in 1993 to 86% in 2006, most likely due to increased awareness of secondhand smoke hazards and a reduction in the number of people smoking in homes.

“Smoke-free rules in homes are extremely important to protect children, given the many adverse effects that secondhand tobacco smoke exposure has on child health,” Alpert said.

 

 

‘A stark warning:’ Smoking causes genetic damage within minutes after inhaling

From a January 15, 2011 Eureka news alert

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 2011 — In research described as “a stark warning” to those tempted to start smoking, scientists are reporting that cigarette smoke begins to cause genetic damage within minutes — not years — after inhalation into the lungs.

Their report, the first human study to detail the way certain substances in tobacco cause DNA damage linked to cancer, appears in Chemical Research in Toxicology***, one of 38 peer-reviewed scientific journals published by the American Chemical Society.

Stephen S. Hecht, Ph.D., and colleagues point out in the report that lung cancer claims a global toll of 3,000 lives each day, largely as a result of cigarette smoking. Smoking also is linked to at least 18 other types of cancer. Evidence indicates that harmful substances in tobacco smoke termed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, are one of the culprits in causing lung cancer. Until now, however, scientists had not detailed the specific way in which the PAHs in cigarette smoke cause DNA damage in humans.

The scientists added a labeled PAH, phenanthrene, to cigarettes and tracked its fate in 12 volunteers who smoked the cigarettes. They found that phenanthrene quickly forms a toxic substance in the blood known to trash DNA, causing mutations that can cause cancer. The smokers developed maximum levels of the substance in a time frame that surprised even the researchers: Just 15-30 minutes after the volunteers finished smoking. Researchers said the effect is so fast that it’s equivalent to injecting the substance directly into the bloodstream.

“This study is unique,” writes Hecht, an internationally recognized expert on cancer-causing substances found in cigarette smoke and smokeless tobacco. “It is the first to investigate human metabolism of a PAH specifically delivered by inhalation in cigarette smoke, without interference by other sources of exposure such as air pollution or the diet. The results reported here should serve as a stark warning to those who are considering starting to smoke cigarettes,” the article notes.

FDA Tobbaco Products : Information Resources

FDA Tobacco Products provides information resources on tobacco products for consumers and healthcare professionals.

Resources include

• News and Events (updates, press releases, meetings,etc)
• Guidance, Compliance & Regulatory Information with links on legal, regulatory, and policy issues related to tobacco products.
• Protecting Kids from Tobacco with information on related regulations
• Resources for you with links to information on how to quit, tobacco prevention in youth, and information for health care providers

The Tools and Alerts section on the home page includes options for email alerts and Twitter. Contact information by phone and fax is also provided.

When the state paid, people stopped smoking

From the December 7, 2010 Reuters health news item by Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When Massachusetts started paying for stop-smoking treatments, people not only kicked the habit but also had fewer heart attacks, researchers reported on Tuesday in the first study to show a clear payoff from investing in smoking prevention efforts.

Smoking dropped by 10 percent among clients of Medicaid, the state health insurance plan for the poor, and nearly 40 percent of Medicaid patients who smoked used benefits to get nicotine patches or drugs to help them quit, the researchers said….

…Thomas Land and colleagues at the Massachusetts Tobacco Cessation and Prevention Program, as well as the Harvard Medical School, looked at hospital records for the study, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine at http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000375.

You Can Quit Smoking Now

SmokeFree.gov includes a step-by-step quit guide, tools to help you quit, and a talk to an expert feature for personalized assistance.

The US government has an extensive smoking cessation Web site at Smoking and Tobacco Use.. Information is separately tailored for individuals, health care workers, scientists, and children/adolescents. Tools and resources include reports, fact sheets, and programs.