ScienceDaily for July 3, 2008 reported on smoking and back-pain.
Smokers suffer more chronic back pain. In 2003, the Robert Koch Institute interviewed more than 8000 private persons in the course of a telephone health survey (GsTel03). This included questions on social and demographic themes, as well as health and life style. On the basis of the collected data, the authors examined whether there was an association between smoking and chronic back pain.
Chewing tobacco and snuff are less dangerous than cigarettes but the smokeless products still raise the risk of oral cancer by 80 percent, the World Health Organisation's cancer agency said on Tuesday.
ScienceDaily for June 15, 2008 reported on links between eating oily fish, smoking, work stress, and Rheumatoid Arthritis.
New data presented June 13 at EULAR 2008, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism in Paris, France, show that intake of oily fish is associated with a reduced risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA), whereas psychosocial work stress and smoking can increase the risk of developing the condition.
An article for June 12, 2008 in ScienceDaily reported on the effect of tobacco, body weight, and alcohol on hearing loss.
In contrast, moderate alcohol consumption (at least one drink a week) was seen to have a protective effect. In the study, one alcoholic drink was defined as one glass of wine, spirit or beer. The effect of heavy drinking was not investigated
An article in ScienceDaily for June 12, 2008 reported on a decline in cigarette smoking but an increase in other forms of smoking.
While trends in cigarette smoking and sales have declined in the U.S. for the past decade, sales of non-cigarette tobacco products have been on the rise. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, led by Professor Greg Connolly, director of the Tobacco Control Research Program at HSPH, and Hillel Alpert, research associate in the program, sought to compare trends in sales of all tobacco products in the U.S. and found that 30% of the recent decline in cigarette sales may be offset by the robust sale of small cigars, snuff and roll-your-own products. Thus, the apparent magnitude of overall decline in tobacco use in the U.S. may be illusory. The comparative research of tobacco sales of all kinds across the past decade is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It is the first study to examine concurrent sales of cigarettes and other tobacco products.
ScienceDaily for June 10, 2008 reported on smoking and memory problems.
A recent meta-analysis concluded that smoking is a risk factor for dementia, according to background information in the article. However, research regarding the link between smoking and cognitive (thinking, learning and memory) function is difficult in older adults because many study participants do not return for follow-up visits or die of smoking-related diseases.
According to an article in ScienceDaily for June 4, 2008
A study from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) supports previous reports that adolescents with bipolar disorder are at increased risk for smoking and substance abuse. The article appearing in the June Drug and Alcohol Dependence -- describing the largest such investigation to date and the first to include a control group -- also indicates that bipolar-associated risk is independent of the risk conferred by other disorders affecting study participants.
An article in ScienceDaily, for June 2, 2008 reported on the recurrence of disease in people who smoke.
People with advanced colon cancer who have smoked cigarettes or used other tobacco products for many years may have an increased risk that their colon cancer will return, according to research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), May 30-June 3, in Chicago.
ScienceDaily for June 2 2008 reported that
A new study provides the most direct evidence that there exists a causal link between smoking during pregnancy and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Clinicians have long considered prenatal cigarette smoke exposure a major contributing risk factor for SIDS, but researchers had not proved a casual relationship. Other contributing factors include disturbances of breathing and heart rate regulation and impaired arousal responses, thermal stress (primarily overheating from too high temperatures or too much clothing) and sleeping in the prone (belly-down) position.
An article in ScienceDaily for May 31 2008 reported on the effect of nutrition on cancer from the use of tobacco.
UCLA researchers found that smokers who ingested high levels of natural chemicals called flavonoids in their diet had a lower risk of developing lung cancer, an important finding since more than 90 percent of lung cancers are caused by tobacco smoking.
Researchers report in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that an analysis of more than 12,000 smokers (and their friends, families and colleagues) over a 30-year period shows that attempting to quit smoking can serve as a people magnet by becoming a phenomenon among social groups, like a gaggle of college students or co-workers at a small firm.
An article in ScienceDaily for May 19, 2008 reported on the effects of secondary smoke from the use of tobacco on children.
The families of 100 Aboriginal children and 180 non-Aboriginal children participated in the Kalgoorlie Otitis Media Research Project, allowing the collection of social, demographic, environmental and biological data to investigate the causes of otitis media (middle ear infections). The children had regular ear examinations from birth until 2 years of age.
An article in ScienceDaily for May 13 2008 reported on suicidal thoughts with and without attempts of suicide.
Cigarette smoking and concurrent mental health conditions may independently account for significant proportions (but not all) of the association between asthma and suicidal thoughts with attempts noted Diana E. Clarke, MSc, PhD, The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, Baltimore, and colleagues.
The study showed that CO triggers Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the causative agent of tuberculosis, to shift from active infection to a drug-resistant dormant state. This is called latency, a global problem that results in tuberculosis escaping detection and treatment, and which contributes to overall tuberculosis transmission.
LiveScience for May 6, 2008 reported on the effect of stopping smoking on heart risks.
New research shows that women who quit smoking have a 21 percent lower risk of dying from coronary heart disease within five years of extinguishing their last cigarette.
ScienceDaily for May 6, 2008 reported on waterpipe smoking on college campuses.
More and more U.S. college students are smoking tobacco using waterpipes – or hookahs – and it's becoming a growing public health issue, according to a new study led by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher.
ScienceDaily for May 5, 2008 reported on one cause of teens not smoking.
Many studies have examined the risk factors that lead young people to try their first cigarette, according to background information in the article. However, fewer researchers have differentiated these factors from those that cause children and teens to progress to established smoking, or having smoked 100 or more cigarettes. "Yet understanding this difference is critical," the authors write. "It would allow us to determine the age and stage at which youths are most sensitive to various types of interventions, thus enabling the more specific tailoring and more effective delivery of smoking prevention interventions."
As the westernization of India accelerates, tobacco advertising and marketing have been linked to increased tobacco use by urban Indian children as young as 11, according to a study released today by researchers at The University of Texas School of Public Health.
According to the study, a 30-minute exposure to the level of secondhand smoke that one might normally inhale in an average bar setting was enough to result in blood vessel injury in young and otherwise healthy lifelong nonsmokers. Compounding the injury to the blood vessels themselves, the exposure to smoke impedes the function of the body's natural repair mechanisms that are activated in the face of the blood vessels' injury, the researchers report. Many of these effects persisted 24 hours later.
ScienceDaily for May 3 2008 reported on mortality rates of younger women.
Coronary heart disease mortality in younger women could be on the rise, according to findings in the open access journal, BMC Public Health, published by BioMed Central. High levels of smoking, increasing obesity and a lack of exercise could all be contributing to this disturbing trend, seen in women under the age of 50.
