Report
E-cig studies provide more conflicting outcomes on potential harm
http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/e-cig-studies-provide-more-conflicting-outcomes-on-potential-harm/article_f1bf6e4b-90e8-5c52-86c5-f845e4808150.html
Another week, another release of studies that have conflicting outcomes on the attractiveness and potential risk of electronic cigarettes, particularly to young adults.
One report, from researchers at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health, determined that government agencies and public-health advocates may be providing an incomplete assessment of smoking e-cigs and vaporizers.
“The proportion of American adults who perceive e-cigarettes to be equally or more harmful than traditional cigarettes has tripled over the last few years (from 12 percent to 35 percent), highlighting the need for more accurate public-health messaging,” according to the researchers. Their study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The other report, from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that 40 percent of current e-cigs smokers ages 18 to 24 had never tried traditional cigarettes before consuming e-cigs and vaporizers, while 43 percent were current traditional cigarette smokers.
By comparison, nearly all adults at least 45 years old were listed as a current or former traditional cigarette consumer.
The CDC report determined that 3.5 percent of adult Americans, or about 8.7 million, were current e-cig users in 2015. The report did not provide how many young adults were current e-cig users.
E-cigs, such as the top-selling Vuse brand by R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co., typically are battery-powered devices that heat a liquid nicotine solution in a disposable cartridge and create a vapor that is inhaled. Vaporizers can be supplied and reused through the insertion of a liquid capsule.
Neither report broke new ground per se.
But until a universally accepted definitive study is released, the two reports add more evidence to support either anti-tobacco advocates, who promote a “quit or die” approach to tobacco products, or anti-smoking advocates, who believe reduced-risk tobacco and nicotine products can play a pivotal role in decreasing the number of traditional cigarette consumers.
For example, anti-smoking advocates have explained the increase in young adults consuming e-cigs as experimentation typical of individuals their age, and a better alternative than traditional cigarettes.
The Georgia State researchers based their report on data from the Tobacco Products and Risk Perception surveys from 2012 through 2015. Nearly 16,000 adults completed the surveys.
Researchers said the proportion of adult smokers who thought e-cigs were addictive more than doubled from 25 percent in 2012 to nearly 57 percent in 2015. Similar trends were seen in non-smoking adults.
“Although the impact of long-term use of e-cigarettes on health is still unknown, the available scientific evidence indicates that e-cigarettes are less harmful than combustible cigarettes,” the researchers said.
Some studies, including from the Royal College of Physicians, have claimed that e-cigs and vaporizers are up to 95 percent less harmful than traditional cigarettes.
However, a pivotal component of the Food and Drug Administration’s tighter e-cig and vaporizer regulations was that they were necessary to limit or thwart the use of nicotine and tobacco products by youth. The regulations, which went into effect Aug. 8, ban the sale nationwide of those products to anyone under age 18.
Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said May 5 that “there are still many open questions about are e-cigarettes a gateway to smoking more harmful products.”
However, most recent federal reports have shown a significant decline in youth smoking of traditional cigarettes in the past 10 years.
Interestingly, among the sponsors of the Georgia State study is the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products.
“Our public health messages should accurately convey to cigarette smokers that switching completely to e-cigarettes would reduce their risks even if e-cigarettes are addictive and not risk-free,” said Dr. Michael Eriksen, dean of Georgia State’s School of Public Health.
Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, responded to the CDC data by saying it “raises fresh concerns that a large majority of adult e-cigarette users are using e-cigarettes in addition to regular cigarettes rather than in place of them.”
“If there is a public health benefit to the emergence of e-cigarettes, it will come only if they are effective at helping smokers stop using cigarettes completely, responsibly marketed to adult smokers and properly regulated to achieve these goals.”
In August, a national study on youth vaporizer use determined that up to 65 percent of students consume the products for flavor, compared with 20 percent for nicotine.
University of Michigan researchers said the results “challenge the common assumption that all vaporizer users inhale nicotine.” The results were published in the publication Tobacco Control.
Patrick Miech, the lead Michigan researcher, said in an email to the Journal that “vaping is a case where the science has yet to catch up with policy, which seems to be guided more by emotion and anecdote than hard facts.”
Scott Ballin, past chairman of the Coalition on Smoking or Health, has called for “all stakeholders to curtail their public relations efforts and call for scientific cooperation, monitoring and surveillance.”
Scientists stunned by new report about smoking
http://www.morningticker.com/2016/10/scientists-stunned-by-new-report-about-smoking/
A new report about smoking suggests that the effects of vaping on the habit may be completely misunderstood.
An alarming new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that vaping might not be the easy cure to smoking that we thought it was, because many adults who use e-cigarettes also smoke tobacco cigarettes.
A total of 59 percent of all adult e-cigarette users also smoke cigarettes, and just 30 percent of e-cigarette users were former smokers, with the remaining 11 percent made up of people who had never smoked before.
A total of 40 percent of e-cig users between the ages of 18-24 were never-smokers, indicating this actually may be a new way to get people hooked on smoking or vaping, especially for young people. About 43 percent were current smokers and 17 percent were former smokers in that age group.
The new report follows a September statement from the CDC showing a rise in vaping in teens.
“The increased use of e-cigarettes by teens is deeply troubling,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., in the statement. “Nicotine is a highly addictive drug. Many teens who start with e-cigarettes may be condemned to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine and conventional cigarettes.”
“About 90 percent of all smokers begin smoking as teenagers,” said Tim McAfee, M.D., M.P.H., director of the CDC Office on Smoking and Health. “We must keep our youth from experimenting or using any tobacco product. These dramatic increases suggest that developing strategies to prevent marketing, sales, and use of e-cigarettes among youth is critical.”
Tobacco industry’s CSR activities still an issue in PH despite improvement in interference index
http://news.pia.gov.ph/article/view/1141474976323/tobacco-industry-s-csr-activities-still-an-issue-in-ph-despite-improvement-in-interference-index
While the Philippines has made significant improvement to control tobacco industry interference two years after it had ranked high among Southeast Asian countries that reported industry influence, much is still needed to be done to protect the government from unnecessary interaction with cigarette makers.
Citing results of the third Tobacco Industry Interference Index organized by the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA), New Vois Association of the Philippines (NVAP) President Emer Rojas said based on the report, the tobacco industry still finds ways to wield influence in government affairs in many countries through corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.
The report, the world’s first ever assessment of tobacco interference in government, and the third one by SEATCA since 2014, reveals that the industry invests huge money on CSR activities to circumvent laws regulating their business and gain access to public officials in charge of implementing tobacco control policies.
“We have a Civil Service Commission guideline that prohibits unnecessary interaction between government and the tobacco industry. Despite that, the industry is able to continue to exercise some influence in government affairs through fake CSR using legitimate business organizations and foundations that lend support to local government units,” Rojas said.
Rojas was referring to the CSC’s Joint Memorandum Circular 2010-01, a code of conduct banning all government officials from receiving or supporting tobacco industry-related CSR activities.
SEATCA noted that while more than 200 national and local government units, including educational institutions and government controlled corporations, have supported the memorandum and drastically reduced unnecessary interaction with the tobacco industry, it still was able to contribute to LGUs through the American Chamber of Commerce which fronts for Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco Corporation (PMFTC) and Mighty Corporation’s Wong Chu King Foundation (WCKF).
SEATCA revealed that as ASEAN countries implement stricter bans on tobacco advertising and promotion, cigarette giants such as Philip Morris International have recently increased their CSR spending in the region.
“Philip Morris International (PMI), for example, increased its spending in three countries (i.e., Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand) in the ASEAN region from USD 1.5 million in 2009 to USD 2.5 million in 2015,” the report said.
“PMI spends the lion’s share of its CSR handouts in Indonesia and the Philippines, about USD 6 million and USD 1.8 million respectively, which are also its largest cigarette markets among ASEAN countries,” added the report.
Rojas said the tobacco industry should be banned from using their “fake” CSR activities because they run counter against the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control guidelines signed by member countries including the Philippines.
“We should encourage legitimate CSR activities and ban fake CSR of the tobacco companies. They need not give us assistance coming from the profits derived from selling products that kill people,” Rojas said.(NVAP)
One More Reason To Swear Off Tobacco: The Inflammatory Trap Induced By Nicotine
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/one_more_reason_to_swear_off_tobacco_the_inflammatory_trap_induced_by_nicotine-179670
An Umeå-based team in collaboration with US researchers reveals a new link between nicotine and inflammation. They report that nicotine strongly activates immune cells to release DNA fibres decorated with pro-inflammatory molecules, so called neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). The continuous exposure to these NETs can harm the tissue and could explain the hazardous consequences of tobacco consumption for human health.
Tobacco use causes death of nearly six million people annually according to WHO. Nicotine is the major addictive and toxic component in tobacco products. In cells, nicotine signals via nicotine acetylcholine receptors to mediate dangerous effects on the consumer’s body. Nicotine is a major cause of inflammatory diseases among smokers and also non-smokers by passive inhalation, such as for instance chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD). COPD is widely spread and affects more than 10 percent of the adult population in westernised countries. The molecular mechanisms underlying this inflammatory activity of nicotine are not well understood.
In a recently published article in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, researchers at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS) at Umeå University reveal a novel link between nicotine and inflammation. They found that nicotine activates neutrophils, in an undesirable fashion.
Neutrophils are the most abundant type of white blood cells that circulate in the blood stream ready to attack invading microbes with an arsenal of antimicrobial compounds. Neutrophils are essential to prevent infection by engulfing invading microbes, or by releasing reactive oxygen species as well as DNA fibres from their own nuclei, termed neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). NET release is a mixed blessing. Loaded with antimicrobial enzymes and pro-inflammatory molecules NETs are harmful to invading microbes, however, they can also potently harm the host’s own tissue, if not controlled in the right manner. In recent years, NETs have been attributed to be mediators of tissue damage in several inflammatory diseases, such as for instance small vessel vasculitis, arthritis and cancer.
For the first time, Ava Hosseinzadeh and colleagues at MIMS show that nicotine triggers NET release. The signal to trigger NETs is mediated by a specific acetylcholine receptor found on neutrophils and further signalled into the cell via a protein kinase known as Akt.
“This particular finding explains the missing piece of the puzzle of tobacco usage and inflammation,” says Ava Hosseinzadeh, who worked on this project during her doctoral dissertation. “This novel finding opens new avenues to understand the consequences of tobacco usage for human health and should be seen as one more convincing argument to quit nicotine usage in any form.”
“The next evident step is to demonstrate the NET-inducing capacity of nicotine in animal models and human samples,” says Constantin Urban, associate professor and project leader at Umeå University. “Such ‘in vivo’ studies will enable us to attract new funders and potentially interest of the pharma industry. Our finding could hopefully lead to novel anti-inflammatory therapies of tobacco usage related diseases.”