ASH, 102 Clifton Street, LONDON, EC2A 4HW.
Tel 020 7739 5902 Fax 020 7613 0531

ASH Daily News

23 October 2006

[View html version: http://www.globalink.org/nbuk]

HEADLINES

£1.3M a day goes up in smoke in Scotland

End of tobacco sponsorship of F1 moves a step closer

PCT states smokers must quit for certain operations

Tendon to bone healing hampered by nicotine, study

Study suggests COPD risk 'significantly higher' than previously thought

FULL TEXT

£1.3M a day goes up in smoke in Scotland

People living in Scotland's most deprived areas are spending £1.3million on cigarettes every day according to official figures obtained by the Sunday Mail.

Deprived areas have three times as many smokers as more affluent places. Male smokers in the poorest parts of Scotland get through around 17 cigarettes a day and women average 16.

With a pack of 20 costing £5.20, that's £31 a week for men and £29 for women - almost a quarter of their weekly income. Their weekly budget is below £131 - just above the official poverty line of £98.

Maureen Moore, chairman of anti-smoking group Ash Scotland, said: "The Executive have started to concentrate on this but projects need to be targeted at deprived areas where there is clearly a desperate problem. When we see people suffering cancer, heart disease and strokes, it seems obvious that finding ways of stopping people from smoking in the first place is the most cost effective solution."

An estimated 310,217 Scots in the poorest areas are smokers.

They spend an incredible £1,330,831 on cigarettes each day.

There are three times fewer smokers living in the most affluent areas - where the average weekly household income is above £800.

They spend £352,608 on cigarettes every day.

The figures from the Office for National Statistics are based on research done in council wards across the country.

Health Minister Andy Kerr said £4million has been dedicated to trying to help poor people quit. He said: "It has long been recognised that there is a strong link between smoking and deprivation. That is why over the next two years, £4 million is being allocated to help target intensive cessation support to areas of deprivation. We are taking cessation work into new environments such as bingo halls to reach out to more people."

Source: Sunday Mail (Scotland), 22 October 2006
Article link: http://tinyurl.com/y6bmow


End of tobacco sponsorship of F1 moves a step closer

The era of tobacco sponsorship of Formula One moved a step closer to the end after the final race of the season yesterday. Japan Tobacco brand Mild Seven made a final appearance on the Renault car while Honda waved goodbye to former team owners British American Tobacco.

From next season only glamour team Ferrari, with their long-term partners Philip Morris, will continue to have any link with the tobacco money that once fuelled the sport.

Source: Daily Mirror, 22 October 2006


PCT states smokers must quit for certain operations
Norfolk Primary Care Trust (PCT) is to take smokers off waiting lists for non-urgent surgery such as hip and knee replacements or hernia operations. They stress smokers needing urgent surgery will not be affected.
Smokers are being ordered to try to quit their habit before surgery or risk losing the chance of an operation. The PCT, which is £50m in the red, said smokers were being targeted because they are at increased risk of complications and take more time to recover from surgery. This means they have longer - and more expensive - stays in hospital.
Norfolk PCT's new director of public health Dr John Battersby said: "There is increasing evidence that smokers have three times the number of complications as non-smokers. We are proposing is that if someone who smokes is being referred for surgery, we would instead want them to be referred to a smoking cessation clinic and give them three months to stop smoking.
Complications smokers are vulnerable to after surgery include wounds taking longer to heal - leading to a greater risk of developing infection, particularly chest infections - and blood clots. And for those needing vascular surgery the risks of arterial clogging are greater for someone who smokes.
"Some people will have stopped, and go on and have a referral for surgery. Others will not have stopped."
In those cases, decisions would be taken in respect of clinical need.
Source: Independent, Daily Mail, Ananova, 23 October 2006
Article link: (A) http://tinyurl.com/ykacnu


Tendon to bone healing hampered by nicotine, study

Orthopaedic surgery researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis studying rotator cuff injury in rats found exposure to nicotine delays tendon-to-bone healing, suggesting this could cause failure of rotator cuff repair following surgery in human patients.

Leesa M. Galatz, M.D. and colleagues studied healing in the shoulders of 72 rats following rotator cuff surgery. The researchers implanted tiny, osmotic pumps under the skin of the rats, and those pumps delivered either nicotine or an inactive saline solution. Saline pumps were implanted to ensure that any changes observed between groups of rats resulted from nicotine exposure rather than from having a pump implanted beneath the skin. In the rats that got nicotine, the pumps maintained nicotine levels in the bloodstream about equivalent to smoking a pack to a pack and a half of cigarettes per day.

"So these would have been heavy smokers," Galatz says. "But another significant aspect about this study is that we did not account for other detrimental chemicals in cigarettes. Rats were not exposed to carbon monoxide, tar or the other substances that harm people who smoke. So if anything, we may have underestimated the negative effects of cigarette smoking on rotator cuff healing."

Galatz says the study also may underestimate the harmful effects of smoking because rats tend to be better healers than humans and because they were exposed to nicotine for only a few weeks following surgery, whereas people may smoke for many years before surgery, as well as continue smoking following rotator cuff repair.

"Certainly more study is necessary to definitively prove that cigarettes affect humans the same way," she admits. "But I think we have enough evidence to state that nicotine has a negative impact on healing in tendons as well as in bone."

As to how nicotine works to interfere with healing, Galatz says it's still too early to tell.

"We would have to look much more closely to learn exactly what the mechanism is, but blood supply is a potential culprit," she says. "Nicotine and cigarette smoking inhibit the formation of new blood vessels, and basically, all healing and all repair processes are aided by the formation of new blood vessels that bring in new cells. That process is assisted by increases in blood supply that may not happen as efficiently in smokers."

Source: Medical News Today, 23 October 2006
Study link: http://tinyurl.com/ym6crs


Study suggests COPD risk 'significantly higher' than previously thought

Researchers in Denmark have found that the lifetime risk of developing a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, such as bronchitis or emphysema, is significantly higher than was previously thought. Through the Copenhagen City Heart Study, which began in 1976 and is ongoing, researchers have been studying more than 8,000 men and women between the ages of 30 and 60, focusing mainly on cardiovascular and pulmonary risk factors. No other study has looked at lung function in smokers for that long.

"Our study shows a lifetime risk of at least 25%. One in four smokers develops COPD," says Dr. Peter Lange of the department of cardiology and respiratory medicine at Hvidovre Hospital in Denmark and an author of the study published last week in the online journal Thorax. "Previously, we thought that the absolute risk was about 15%." People who have never smoked have a less than 5% risk of COPD, according to the study. Add up all the disease risks quantified so far, and about half of continual smokers will die of a smoking-related illness, losing an average of six to 10 years of their life spans, Lange says.

The study doesn't differentiate between heavy and light smokers. Researchers divided people according to the date they quit within a 25-year period. The longer a person had not smoked, the lower his or her risk.

But quitting even after many years has immediate benefits. "There is a cessation of symptoms like cough and phlegm production and a lower risk of chest infections," Lange says.

But there's no getting back what has been lost. "If the lung function is reduced at the time of quitting, it will not return to normal," Lange says. Still, when a smoker stops, the lungs begin to age naturally from that point on.

One of the first studies to examine the effect of smoking cessation programs on mortality, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on Feb. 15, 2005, followed 5,887 middle-aged people for more than 14 years. Those who quit reduced significantly their risks of lung cancer, heart disease and respiratory disease.

"Stopping smoking means the damage to the lungs stops," Lange says.

As the Denmark study continues to monitor the lungs of people who keep smoking - and keep living - it appears that respiratory failure gets more likely over time, according to an accompanying editorial by Dr. Nicholas Anthonisen of the University of Manitoba Respiratory Hospital, and author of the 2005 mortality study. He writes: "An argument can be made that many (perhaps most) smokers are 'susceptible' to COPD if they live long enough."

Source: LATimes, 23 October 2006
Journal link: http://thorax.bmjjournals.com/current.shtml
----------------------------------
Unsubscribe:

Public subscribers: http://www.ash.org.uk/html/about/subscribe.php
Globalink members: http://member.globalink.org
----------------------------------


Michael Fredman
Web Manager
ASH
102 Clifton St
EC2A 4HW

020 7739 5902