Firms offered stop smoking clinic

Businesses are being urged to start their own "quit smoking clinics" with the help of hospital specialists. 

The Colchester and Tendring NHS Stop Smoking Service run by NHS North East Essex can provide a specialist adviser to visit businesses.

A clinic can be set up if there are at least eight employees who would like to stop smoking.

The clinics can be either one-to-one or group consultation based and run over a period of between six and eight weeks.

Sue White, co-ordinator of the service, said: "The clinics are run with minimal disruption to work activities and a wide range of help and support is available, including nicotine replacement therapy, zyban or champix if prescribed.

"What we have found with the companies we have already worked with is that groups of employees who make a joint commitment to stop can support each other.

"They have a shared goal.

"If they are successful, it is not only good for the individuals concerned, but is good news for the company because they will have a fitter and healthier workforce.

"If businesses prefer not to have an on-site clinic or if they have fewer than eight employees, they can always offer staff time off to attend one of the many stop smoking clinics which we run around the area."

Source: The BBC, 16 November 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/6nz2su

Smoking plus gene variant raises breast cancer risk

Women with a particular gene mutation linked to breast cancer may further raise their risk of the disease if they smoke, a study has found.

The gene in question is known as the ataxia-telangiectasia, or A-T, gene. At least 1 percent of the population carries a mutation in the gene, and women who carry mutated A-T have a higher-than-average risk of developing breast cancer.

But until now it had not been known whether smoking increases this risk even more. Studies on smoking and breast cancer in the population as a whole have generally found little or no evidence that the habit contributes to the disease.

These latest findings, however, should give women yet another reason not to smoke, according to lead researcher Dr. Michael Swift, of the Disease Insight Research Foundation in Ardsley, New York.

While the study focused only on women with an A-T mutation, most women who carry such a mutation do not know it, Swift said.

So it's wise -- for a whole range of health reasons -- for all female smokers to give up the habit.

Most people do not know whether they have an A-T mutation because the defect causes no symptoms when a person carries only one copy of the mutated gene. In the uncommon case where a child inherits two copies of a mutated A-T gene -- one copy from each parent -- it causes ataxia- telangiectasia, a disorder that attacks the nervous system.

For the current study, reported in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, Swift's team used data on 859 women who'd been recruited into a long-term A-T gene study between 1971 and 1999.

All had a family member affected by ataxia-telangiectasia, and blood and tissue tests had confirmed that 539 carried an A-T mutation.

Among the gene carriers who did not smoke, 21 percent developed breast cancer by the age of 80. In contrast, a full 80 percent of carriers who smoked developed the disease.

"Women who know they carry an A-T mutation and are still smoking should certainly give up," Swift said.

But the same advice, he added, goes for all smokers. As yet, there is no test for A-T mutations available for the general public.

It's not clear why the combination of smoking and a mutated A-T gene carries such a high long-term risk of breast cancer. Smoking damages the DNA within body cells, and the A-T gene is involved in repairing such damage; so it's possible that people with an A-T mutation are unable to overcome the gene-level harm that smoking causes.

Source: Reuters News, 18 November 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/5974nr

Pensioner dies after smoking in her bed

An 82 year old Salsburgh pensioner died in her bed after accidentally setting it on fire.

Jean Fell, of Main Street, was smoking when a dropped light ignited her bedclothes.

The OAP managed to get out of bed but was overcome by smoke which had filled up the room.

Fire and ambulance services were called and a doctor pronounced her dead at the scene last Friday at 2.05pm.

A Strathclyde Fire Brigade spokesman said: “There are strong indications that the elderly lady was smoking in bed.

“Our sympathies go out to the lady’s family but we also must point out the dangers of smoking in bed. It’s too easy to drift off into sleep and let the cigarette land on bedclothes."

“All cigarettes must be extinguished before going to bed.”

A police spokesman said that there were no suspicious circumstances.

Source: Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser, 19 November 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/6bcph4

EU farm chief refuses to prolong tobacco subsidies

Europe's agriculture chief refused to bow to demands to prolong subsidies for tobacco growers as part of this week's farm reform talks, saying there were other solutions to cushion any financial pain.

Eight major EU tobacco-producing countries have said they want existing subsidies extended to 2013, despite an agreement struck four years ago that will see the historic link between cash amount and production volume scrapped from 2010. "Tobacco is not in the health check," EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel told the European Parliament, referring to her blueprint for a mini-reform of EU farm policy that EU ministers will begin negotiating on Wednesday.

Several thousands of tobacco farmers, mainly from France, are expected to hold protests in Brussels on Wednesday.

She added, "The tobacco reform was made in 2004, it was supported by all countries and also all tobacco producing member states. I have said lots of times, I am certainly not going to reopen the tobacco reform."

That 2004 deal will see subsidies for tobacco growers, regardless of the size of their output, fully decoupled from production amounts from 2010. Half of the total payments will be shifted into a restructuring fund to help farmers improve yields or switch to other crops.

As a social safety-net to cushion the reform, EU countries were allowed to retain up to 60 percent of payments linked to production, but only for farmers in poor areas or in schemes to promote quality varieties, for four years from 2006.

Earlier this month, a group of countries agreed to demand only a partial decoupling of subsidies from 2010, arguing that otherwise there would be a social impact on thousands of people employed in the sector.

Led by Italy, those countries include France, Greece and Spain and also newer EU member states Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Hungary that did not participate in the 2004 "Mediterranean reform" talks that also overhauled cotton and olive oil policy.

After refusing to reopen the tobacco reform, Fischer Boel said there might well be other ways within her "health check" of farm policy to mitigate the worst effects of tobacco subsidy decoupling.

"I'll be open to help all those member states, regions, that do face problems because there are lots of possibilities available in the rural development policy," she said.

"I'm sure we can create solutions that will soften the consequences of the decisions already taken for the tobacco producers," she added in her address to the European Parliament.

Source: The Guardian, 18 November 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/6lfjc2

Smoking while pregnant harms baby's blood vessels

Women who smoke during pregnancy may cause permanent blood vessel damage in their children that may become evident as early as young adulthood and raise the risk for heart attack and stroke, Dutch investigators reported today.

The study involved 732 young adults, born between 1970 and 1973, who were evaluated at around 30 years of age. Compared with young adults of mothers who did not smoke during pregnancy, young adults of mothers who did light up during pregnancy had much thicker walls of the carotid arteries in the neck that supply blood to the brain.

Even if the mothers did not smoke during pregnancy, having a father who smoked during gestation was also associated with thicker neck or "carotid" arteries. The association was strongest when both parents smoked during pregnancy.

Dr. Cuno S. P. M. Uiterwaal, from University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands, and colleagues also found that young adults of mothers who smoked were more likely to smoke themselves, and these subjects had the greatest increase in carotid artery thickness compared with nonsmokers who were not exposed in the womb to tobacco.

"The interaction between participant's current smoking behavior and maternal smoking during pregnancy could indicate that if the cardiovascular system is exposed to tobacco smoke in utero, the vessels are more vulnerable to tobacco smoke later in life."

On the other hand, current smoking by women who abstained during pregnancy had no effect on the thickness of their children's neck arteries.

"Our findings were largely independent of other cardiovascular disease risk factors," Dr Uiterwaal and colleagues point out, lending plausibility to the notion of deleterious vascular effects from gestational exposure to tobacco smoke.

Source: Reuters News, 20 November 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/6qkl4u