The Role of the Clinical Laboratory in Nutritional Assessment
Aruna Bakhru in Nutrition and Integrative Medicine, 2018
Use of cigarettes and other tobacco products is a leading cause of death worldwide. Smoking tobacco suppresses appetite, impairs the sense of smell, and impacts the ability to absorb calcium, vitamins C and D, and other nutrients. Many companies, organizations, and governments restrict smoking. Because insurers and employers may provide financial incentives not to smoke, employees who do use tobacco products may misrepresent their use. Cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine, has a longer plasma half-life and is more amenable to testing than nicotine. Thus, companies may use cotinine testing to validate self-reported tobacco status. Many of us tend to overestimate our height, underestimate our weight and waist circumference, and falsely claim tobacco abstinence. Accordingly, physicians can validate their patients’ assertions about tobacco abstinence through cotinine testing.
Premalignant and malignant disease of the lower genital tract
Helen Bickerstaff, Louise C Kenny in Gynaecology, 2017
Cervical cancer is caused by persistent high-risk HPV infection. HPV is a small, double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) virus of which there are more than 100 different types. These are classified as low-risk or high-risk types, depending on their ability to cause cancer. Low-risk types HPV 6 and 11 cause benign warts, while high-risk types HPV 16, 18, 31, 33 and 45 cause cervical cancer. HPV infection is spread during sexual intercourse. Infection is very common following the onset of sexual activity and up to 80% of adults show serological evidence of previous infection. Infection is usually transient and of no clinical consequence, but a minority of individuals develop a persistent genital infection that predisposes them to premalignant and malignant change (see below under Natural history of CIN). Smoking reduces the efficiency with which the virus is cleared by the immune system and increases the risk of persistent infection. Women who are immunocompromised, for example those with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and transplant recipients on long-term immunosuppressive therapy, are particularly at risk of premalignant and malignant disease of the cervix.
An Agenda for Action IV: Protection of Those Who Do Not Use Mood-Altering Drugs
Barry Stimmel in Drug Abuse and Social Policy in America, 2014
Not unexpectedly, in response to the increasing attacks on passive smoking, the tobacco industry has responded with gusto. It has questioned the validity of critical studies, sponsored scientific symposia to emphasize the relative innocuous nature of secondhand smoke and, as always, has contributed heavily to political campaigns. However, realizing that such efforts will have only transient success, the industry has devoted much more attention to diminishing the toxicity of secondhand smoke. The R. J. Reynolds Company has announced its plans to market a cigarette with the same nicotine content as its current products, but that when smoked produces little odor or smoke.18 A charcoal filter extracts coal tars, and this new product is said to deliver five- to tenfold fewer toxic substances to the system and the environment. It is promoted as maintaining the flavor of smoking, without burning tobacco. Although diminishing the criticism of “passive” smokers if effective, it clearly defines cigarettes as a drug-delivery system that could place the product under the auspices of the Food and Drug Administration, thus seriously limiting its use.
Dietary Pattern, Genomic Stability and Relative Cancer Risk in Asian Food Landscape
Published in Nutrition and Cancer, 2022
Razinah Sharif, Suzana Shahar, Nor Fadilah Rajab, Michael Fenech
In Korea, their food screening study reported that products commonly consumed in food service facilities were free from carcinogenic PAHs as shown in the result of monitoring, exposure assessment, and risk characterization (38). Among 412 food samples, only 0.7% food samples including seaweed soup, seasoned squid, and dried Chinese radish salad showed lower content than 0.5 μg/kg of analyzed PAHs. The calculated margin of exposure showed that foodstuff from food service facilities in Korea had a level of negligible concern to health. Another study in Korea on cooking oils found that margin of exposure represents negligible concern (39). In Taiwan, they conducted a study on PAHs in sugar-smoked meat and found that highly carcinogenic benzo[a]pyrene remained undetected in all of the sugar-smoked meat sample, indicating that sugar-smoking can be adopted to replace the traditional smoking process with wood as smoke source (40). In a study focusing on cooking methods, concentration of PAH was found to be higher in the samples from fast food restaurants/buffets, followed by fried food stalls and then cooking restaurants/cafeterias (27). The results of this study suggest that the government should strengthen control and supervision of PAH contamination in food and edible oils.
Behavior of Caenorhabditis elegans in a nicotine gradient modulated by food
Published in Drug and Chemical Toxicology, 2019
Robert Sobkowiak, Piotr Kaczmarek, Mateusz Kowalski, Rafał Kabaciński, Andrzej Lesicki
We revealed that nicotine can reduce worm body size. The anorectic effects of smoking have been well documented in human subjects, and the principal reason cited by female teenagers for why they smoke is weight control. On average, smokers weigh 5 kg less than nonsmokers and have significantly lower body mass index than nonsmokers. Similarly, nicotine decreases feeding in animal models, suggesting that nicotine in tobacco is important for the effects of smoking on appetite (Picciotto and Kenny 2013). Question does chronic nicotine exposure reduce the drive of C. elegans to seek out food, as an equivalent to loss of appetite in humans remains still open. Our results suggest that C. elegans may serve as a useful model organism for nicotine-motivated and food-motivated behaviors that could help in understanding the mechanisms underlying the anorectic effects of taking nicotine. Thus research on C. elegans may facilitate the development of novel treatments to help with smoking cessation and with preventing or treating obesity.
Effectiveness of a perioperative smoking cessation program evaluated over one-year follow-up
Published in Journal of Substance Use, 2021
Doh Young Lee, Seong Dong Kim, Jaehyun Lim, Kwang Hyun Kim, Hong Ryul Jin, Young Ho Jung
Smoking is the main risk factor for more than 60 diseases and is the most common cause of death in the world. Smoking can cause cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular morbidity, reduced health-related quality of life, and premature death (Mussener et al., 2016). Furthermore, ENT diseases such as rhinosinusitis; chronic pharyngeal disease; laryngeal disease, including voice disorders; and cancers in the oral cavity and laryngopharynx are all associated with smoking (Caminha et al., 2018; Roden et al., 2020). Smoking is also associated with treatment-related complications. Many studies have revealed that smokers have a higher incidence of perioperative respiratory and cardiovascular complications than nonsmokers (Moller et al., 2002). Furthermore, many clinical studies have found that smoking has adverse effects on wound healing and that smoking cessation can reduce the wound complications of various types of invasive surgeries, including head and neck surgeries (De Cassia Braga Ribeiro et al., 2003).
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