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The role of secondhand smoking on the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in elderly men and women living in Mediterranean islands: the MEDIS study  

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Women and Smoking: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Socioeconomic Influences 

Human Pathogens Abundant in the Bacterial Metagenome of Cigarettes 

The full version of this article is available for free in PDF format.

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Two different life stories, one common disease 

Lung cancer has forced Neal and Zisook into a kind of club that no one wants to be a member of. They have become unlikely friends, engaged in a campaign of awareness and compassion in their roles as representatives for the American Lung Association in greater Chicago for November, which is Lung Cancer Awareness Month.

Their messages have a common purpose, if originating from opposite circumstances. Neal wants people to realize that lung cancer is not just a smoker's disease. Zisook suggests parents hammer home the dangers of smoking by asking children to take five family members and five best friends and then decide which five will die.

"You have to put that right in people's faces, and that is horrible, but it is the truth," he said. "Sure, I always knew smoking is bad, but no one ever told me that 50 percent of people who smoke will die from it." . . .

"What we are finding is that because of that stigma, lung cancer is not financially supported in the same way as other cancers," said Harold Wimmer, chief executive officer for the American Lung Association of Illinois of Greater Chicago. "The fact is that lung cancer is the No. 1 cause of cancer-related deaths, but 40 percent of individuals who have lung cancer are nonsmokers."

The disparity in per-patient spending on research each year is striking: For lung cancer it's $1,826 per death, compared with $27,038 for breast cancer, according to 2009 statistics from the National Institutes of Health.

Another disparity: 160,000 people this year will die of lung cancer compared with 25,000 of breast cancer, Wimmer said. . . .

Neal and Zisook are doing their part to raise awareness. And although Neal said "smoking is disgusting" she does not think people should die for taking up a bad habit.

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A prospective study of smoking, caffeine, and alcohol as risk factors for seizures or epilepsy in young adult women: Data from the Nurses' Health Study II  

Results: Compared with never smoking, current cigarette smoking was associated with an increased risk of seizure (RR 2.60, 95% CI 1.53–4.42), after adjustment for stroke and other potential confounding factors. Past smoking was not associated with risk of seizure, but was associated with modestly increased risk of epilepsy (RR 1.46, 95% CI 1.01–2.12). Long-term caffeine and moderate alcohol intake were not associated with seizure or epilepsy.

Discussion: Cigarette smoking may be associated with increased risk of seizure. More prospective studies are needed to investigate potential factors to ultimately prevent the development of seizures or epilepsy.

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• Seventy per cent of Bulgarian smokers wanted to quit, survey says  

More than 70 per cent of smokers in Bulgaria wanted to give up smoking, Yulia Medichkova of the Greenwild Foundation was quoted by Bulgarian news agency BTA as saying on November 19 2009.

Medichkova presented the results of a one-year campaign entitled The Culture of Breathing. Over 50 per cent of Bulgarians approved of increased restrictions on smoking that will be introduced by mid-2010. Bulgaria ranks third in the world in terms of number of smokers, after Japan and Greece, Medichkova said.

What was more worrying, according to another survey released by the Health Ministry on November 17 2009, was that every second pregnant woman in Bulgaria smoked during pregnancy.

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Assessment of Exposure to Secondhand Smoke at Outdoor Bars and Family Restaurants in Athens, Georgia, Using Salivary Cotinine  

Nonsmokers outside restaurants and bars in Athens, Georgia, have significantly elevated salivary cotinine levels indicative of secondhand smoke exposure.

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• Secondhand smoke exposure worse for toddlers, obese children 

Toddlers and obese children suffer more than other youth when exposed to secondhand smoke, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2009.

"Secondhand smoke in children is not just bad for respiratory issues, as has been previously described by other researchers," said John Anthony Bauer, Ph.D., the study's senior co-author and principal investigator at Nationwide Children's Hospital & Research Institute at Ohio State University in Columbus. "Our data support the view that cardiovascular effects of secondhand smoke in children are important, particularly for the very young and those who are obese. We had not investigated the impact of obesity in previous studies."

Bauer and colleagues recruited American boys and girls, including 52 toddlers (ages 2 to 5 years) and 107 adolescents (ages 9 to 18 years). The study included black, white and Hispanic children, including obese toddlers and adolescents.

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• Exposure to secondhand smoke increases risk for Type 2 diabetes 

Chronic secondhand smoke exposure significantly increases the risk for Type 2 diabetes, show results from a study of Greek and Cypriot elderly men and women.

“While active smoking is strongly related to the development of diabetes mellitus, the role of exposure to secondhand smoke in the development of diabetes mellitus is unclear,” write Demosthenes Panagiotakos (Harokopio University, Athens, Greece) and colleagues in the journal Diabetic Medicine.

The researchers recruited 1190 elderly men and women aged 65 years or above from several Greek and Cypriot islands in the Mediterranean during 2005–2007.

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Are Smokers Now at Higher Risk of Bladder Cancer? Are Changes in Cigarettes To Blame? ($$) 

sed on a comparison of two very large cohorts, suggested just the opposite: Far from making the cigarettes safer, the design changes might have made them even more dangerous.

A debate over the consequences of the cigarette changes has continued . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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A Case-Control Study of Smoking and Bladder Cancer Risk: Emergent Patterns Over Time  

Conclusions: Smoking-related risks of bladder cancer appear to have increased in New Hampshire since the mid-1990s. Based on our modeling of pack-years and intensity, smoking fewer cigarettes over a long time appears more harmful than smoking more cigarettes over a shorter time, for equal total pack-years of cigarettes smoked.

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EDITORIAL: Cigarette Smoking and Bladder Cancer: A New Twist in an Old Saga?  

The findings of Baris et al. (7) are provocative and are accompanied by a tenable hypothesis. Recalling the steady accumulation of evidence and the cautious inferences that eventually led to the determination that smoking causes bladder cancer, these intriguing findings offer a testable hypothesis that warrants thorough investigation. An important element of this research will be to more precisely, pinpoint the specific role of cigarette additives will be an important element of this research. This study highlights the need for continued vigilance in monitoring the impact of changing cigarette content and design on disease risk, and demonstrates that the public health implications of the changing cigarette content and design are potentially severe.

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• Nonsmokers Top Smokers in Well-Being Across All Incomes 

Smokers trail nonsmokers in well-being, regardless of income bracket, according to Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data collected in 2008 and 2009. In every income group, smokers are less likely than nonsmokers to be "thriving" by at least 12 percentage points. . . .

In the case of emotional health, the connection between smoking and low well-being is especially pronounced for low-income respondents. While the emotional health gap between smokers and nonsmokers is 4 points for the highest income group, the gap for the lowest income group is 10 points.

The differences in the size of the smoking gap across income groups could mean that the emotional consequences of smoking are less pronounced for people in the higher income group. Another possibility is that people in different income groups smoke for different emotional reasons. . . .

Self-reported smoking status is, in fact, strongly linked to depression. . . .

Across all income groups, smokers also fare worse than nonsmokers in physical health as reflected in lower scores on the Physical Health Index. Consistent with medical research connecting smoking to premature mortality, people who are 85 years old or older are unlikely to be smokers.

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Massachusetts' Success in Helping Medicaid Recipients Quit Smoking Shows Why Congress Should Require Cessation Coverage in Health Reform 

Massachusetts today announced extraordinary results from its aggressive efforts to help Medicaid beneficiaries quit smoking by providing easy access to coverage for smoking cessation medication and counseling.

Massachusetts reported that smoking rates among beneficiaries in its MassHealth program plunged by 26 percent in the first two and a half years after the state began providing coverage of smoking cessation in July 2006. Costly medical procedures among those who utilized the cessation benefit also fell dramatically. Among benefit users, there were 38 percent fewer hospitalizations for heart attacks and 17 percent fewer emergency-room visits for asthma symptoms in the first year after using the benefit. There were 17 percent fewer claims for maternal birth complications since the benefit was implemented, state health officials reported.

Massachusetts is leading the way in demonstrating that health insurance coverage for smoking cessation quickly improves health and saves lives, and no doubt reduces health care costs as well.

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• Cigarettes harbor many pathogenic bacteria 

Cigarettes are "widely contaminated" with bacteria, including some known to cause disease in people, concludes a new international study conducted by a University of Maryland environmental health researcher and microbial ecologists at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon in France.

The research team describes the study as the first to show that "cigarettes themselves could be the direct source of exposure to a wide array of potentially pathogenic microbes among smokers and other people exposed to secondhand smoke." Still, the researchers caution that the public health implications are unclear and urge further research.

"We were quite surprised to identify such a wide variety of human bacterial pathogens in these products," says lead researcher Amy R. Sapkota, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland's School of Public Health.

"The commercially-available cigarettes that we tested were chock full of bacteria, as we had hypothesized, but we didn't think we'd find so many that are infectious in humans," explains Sapkota, who holds a joint appointment with the University's Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health and the department of epidemiology and biostatistics.

"If these organisms can survive the smoking process -- and we believe they can -- then they could possibly go on to contribute to both infectious and chronic illnesses in both smokers and individuals who are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke," . . .

The study will appear in an upcoming edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. . . .

Sapkota's team took a more holistic approach using DNA microarray analysis to estimate the so-called bacterial metagenome, the totality of bacterial genetic material present in the tested cigarettes.

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The commercially-available cigarettes that we tested were chock full of bacteria, as we had hypothesized, but we didn't think we'd find so many that are infectious in humans. If these organisms can survive the smoking process -- and we believe they can -- then they could possibly go on to contribute to both infectious and chronic illnesses in both smokers and individuals who are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke.
Lead researcher Amy R. Sapkota, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland's School of Public Health, on the study that will appear in an upcoming edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.