Men in China face increasing tobacco-related cancer risks
2015-09-02
(Press-News.org) In China, smoking now causes nearly a quarter of all cancers in adult males. The finding comes from a large study published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, as part of a Special Issue on Lung Cancer in China. High uptake rates of cigarette smoking in teenaged males and continued use in adulthood foreshadow even greater tobacco-related cancer risks for the nation.
Tobacco-related deaths have been declining steadily in most developed countries; however, China now produces and consumes about 40 percent of the world's cigarettes, with much of the rapid increase taking place since the early 1980s, involving almost exclusively only men.
To get a sense of the current smoking-related cancer risks in China, a research team led jointly by Professor Zhengming Chen, DPhil, of the University of Oxford in the UK and Professor Liming Li, MD, of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in China, analyzed data from a nationwide prospective study called the China Kadoorie Biobank, which recruited 210,259 men and 302,632 women aged 30 to 79 years from 10 areas of China from 2004 to 2008. The study recorded approximately 18,000 new cancers during seven years of follow-up.
Among the major findings:
Sixty-eight percent of men in the study were smokers, and they had a 44 percent increased risk of developing cancer compared with nonsmokers.
This excess risk accounted for 23 percent of all cancers that arose between the ages of 40 and 79 years, with significantly elevated risks of cancers of the lung, liver, stomach, esophagus, and a collection of five other minor sites.
Among ex-smokers (6.7%) who had stopped by choice, there was little excess cancer risk within 15 years after quitting.
In contrast to men, only three percent of females in the study were smokers, and they experienced a 42 percent increased risk of cancer compared with nonsmokers.
Smoking causes an estimated 435,000 new cancers (360,000 in men and 75,000 in women) each year in China.
"The tobacco-related cancer risks among men are expected to increase substantially during the next few decades as a delayed effect of the recent rise in cigarette use, unless there is widespread cessation among adult smokers," the authors wrote. The study also noted that the first generation of men in China to experience the full extent of tobacco risks will probably be those who were born during the 1970s or 1980s, who reached adulthood when cigarette consumption was high. By contrast, this is the least exposure for the female generation in China. "If smoking rates remain low in women, tobacco may soon be responsible for most of the difference in life expectancy between men and women in China. Widespread smoking cessation offers China one of the most effective, and cost-effective, strategies for avoiding cancer and premature death over the next few decades" said Professor Zhengming Chen, the lead author and principal investigator of the China Kadoorie Biobank.
INFORMATION:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2015-09-02
School age children who are born prematurely are more likely to have low mathematical achievement, thought to be associated with reduced working memory and number skills, according to a new study published today in the neurology journal Brain.
Researchers assessed up to 224 preterm children at age five and age seven to examine the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) after birth to identify infants at risk of later academic impairment. The study participants are from Melbourne, Australia and are part of a Murdoch Children's Research Institute study. The authors suggest ...
2015-09-02
DURHAM, N.C. -- A new Duke University-led study has revealed the presence of radioactive contaminants in coal ash from all three major U.S. coal-producing basins.
The study found that levels of radioactivity in the ash were up to five times higher than in normal soil, and up to 10 times higher than in the parent coal itself because of the way combustion concentrates radioactivity.
The finding raises concerns about the environmental and human health risks posed by coal ash, which is currently unregulated and is stored in coal-fired power plants' holding ponds and landfills ...
2015-09-02
New York, NY--September 2, 2015--Researchers from Columbia Engineering and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have developed a new method that can target delivery of very small volumes of drugs into the lung. Their approach, in which micro-liters of liquid containing a drug are instilled into the lung, distributed as a thin film in the predetermined region of the lung airway, and absorbed locally, may provide much more effective treatment of lung disease. The work was published in the August 31 online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ...
2015-09-02
Refined by nature over a billion years, photosynthesis has given life to the planet, providing an environment suitable for the smallest, most primitive organism all the way to our own species.
While scientists have been studying and mimicking the natural phenomenon in the laboratory for years, understanding how to replicate the chemical process behind it has largely remained a mystery -- until now.
Recent experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have afforded researchers a greater understanding of how to manipulate photosynthesis, ...
2015-09-02
(Boston)--A new discovery by Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers may change how kidney disease is treated in the future.
The previously unknown protein transmembrane and immunoglobulin containing 1 (TMIGD1) involved in protecting kidney epithelial cells (cells critical to normal kidney function) from injury, could be a novel target for restoring kidney function from various forms of kidney disease. The findings are published online in the American Journal of Pathology.
Kidneys have several roles, of which filtering blood of waste products to generate ...
2015-09-02
The world might seem a little grayer than usual when we're down in the dumps and we often talk about "feeling blue" -- new research suggests that the associations we make between emotion and color go beyond mere metaphor. The results of two studies indicate that feeling sadness may actually change how we perceive color. Specifically, researchers found that participants who were induced to feel sad were less accurate in identifying colors on the blue-yellow axis than those who were led to feel amused or emotionally neutral.
The research is published in Psychological Science, ...
2015-09-02
A research group, led by Professor Masao Nagasaki and Senior Assistant Professor Yosuke Kawai at Tohoku University Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization, has successfully designed the first ever SNP*1 array that has been optimized for the Japanese population.
SNP, which stands for Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, is a DNA sequence variation that occurs commonly within a population.
This new array, called the "Japonica Array," covers the whole-genome region from which the SNPs possessed by Japanese people can be obtained with a high degree of accuracy.
The design of ...
2015-09-02
Young women who are attracted to both sexes or who are unsure about who they are attracted to are more likely to develop an eating disorder than those attracted to only one sex, according to a new study from Drexel University.
However, the results of the study suggest that females attracted to the same-sex are no more likely to experience disordered eating symptoms than their peers with opposite-sex attractions. This finding is contrary to previous assumptions that same-sex attraction plays a protective role against eating pathology in females.
"The results of this ...
2015-09-02
London, 2 September 2015: With 32,773 registrations this year (1), ESC Congress 2015 broke yet another record in attendance. "We are proud to have brought together so many delegates and the latest research from all over the world," said ESC President, Professor Fausto Pinto, from Portugal.
"By 2030, 40% of Europeans will suffer from some form of CVD," said Prof Fausto Pinto, ESC President, "so what is going on in our congress is relevant to everyone, not only health professionals." (2)
Despite improvements in mortality and morbidity, CVD remains the main killer ...
2015-09-02
The word "apple", as we pronounce it, is a sequence of sounds (phonemes) that we use whenever we want to refer to the object it indicates. If we did not know that a referential relationship exists between the sound and the object it would be impossible for us to use, and learn, a language. Where does this implicit knowledge come from, and how early in human development does it manifest? This is the question Hanna Marno and her SISSA colleagues Marina Nespor and Jacques Mehler in a collaboration with Teresa Farroni, from the University of Padova, attempted to answer in a ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Men in China face increasing tobacco-related cancer risks