PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Where there’s smoke, there’s thiocyanate: McMaster researchers find tobacco users in Canada are exposed to higher levels of cyanide than other regions

Where there’s smoke, there’s thiocyanate: McMaster researchers find tobacco users in Canada are exposed to higher levels of cyanide than other regions
2023-03-24
(Press-News.org) HAMILTON, ON – Mar 24, 2024 – Tobacco users in Canada are exposed to higher levels of cyanide than smokers in lower-income nations, according to a large-scale population health study from McMaster University.

Scientists made the discovery while investigating the molecule thiocyanate – a detoxified metabolite excreted by the body after cyanide inhalation. It was measured as a urinary biomarker of tobacco use in a study of self-reported smokers and non-smokers from 14 countries of varying socioeconomic status.

“We expected the urinary thiocyanate levels would be similar across regions and reflect primarily smoking intensity. However, we noticed significant elevation of thiocyanate in smokers from high-income countries even after adjusting for differences in the number of cigarettes smoked per day,” says Philip Britz-McKibbin, co-author of the study and a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at McMaster.

Tobacco-related illness remains the leading cause of preventable illness and premature death in Canada, contributing to approximately 48,000 deaths annually. According to researchers, the findings could be caused by the type of cigarettes smoked in high-income countries like Canada.

“The cigarettes commonly consumed in Canada are highly engineered products with lower tar and nicotine content to imply they’re less harmful. Heavy smokers with nicotine dependence compensate by smoking more aggressively with more frequent and deeper inhalations that may elicit more harm, such as greater exposure to the respiratory and cardiotoxin, cyanide.”

Smoking rates in Canada have declined from 26 per cent in 2001 to 13 per cent in 2020. But participation in smoking cessation programs has declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to concern about a potential uptick in smoking rates, including cannabis use and a plethora of vaping of products popular among young adults.

Researchers say urinary thiocyanate can serve as a robust biomarker of the harms of tobacco smoke that will aid future research on the global tobacco picture, since most smokers now reside in developing countries. As smoking rates have decreased here in Canada, at-risk groups like youth and pregnant women have been prone to underreport their tobacco use when surveyed, making a reliable biomarker more valuable.

“Historically assessing tobacco behaviors have relied on questionnaires that are prone to bias, especially when comparing different countries and local cultures. The idea is to find robust methods that can quantify recent tobacco smoke exposure more reliably and objectively, which may better predict disease risk and prioritize interventions for smoking cessation.” says Britz-Mckibbin.

The study was published in the latest issue of Nicotine and Tobacco Research and received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Genome Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Hamilton Health Sciences New Investigator Fund, and an internal grant from the Population Health Research Institute.

 

-30-

 

For more information please contact:

Matt Innes-Leroux

Media Relations

McMaster University

647-921-5461 (c)

leroum2@mcmaster.ca

 

Photos of Philip Britz-McKibbin can be found here

Credit: McMaster University

END


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Where there’s smoke, there’s thiocyanate: McMaster researchers find tobacco users in Canada are exposed to higher levels of cyanide than other regions Where there’s smoke, there’s thiocyanate: McMaster researchers find tobacco users in Canada are exposed to higher levels of cyanide than other regions 2 Where there’s smoke, there’s thiocyanate: McMaster researchers find tobacco users in Canada are exposed to higher levels of cyanide than other regions 3

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

SIAM Conference on Applications of Dynamical Systems (DS23)

2023-03-24
The application of dynamical systems theory to areas outside of mathematics continues to be a vibrant, exciting, and fruitful endeavor. These application areas are diverse and multidisciplinary, covering areas that include biology, chemistry, physics, climate science, social science, industrial mathematics, data science, and more. This conference strives to amass a blend of application-oriented material and the mathematics that informs and supports the discipline. The goals of the conference are a cross-fertilization of ideas from different application areas and increased communication between ...

SIAM Conference on Mathematical & Computational Issues in the Geosciences (GS23)

2023-03-24
The study of geophysical systems at all scales, whether from a scientific or technological perspective, calls for sophisticated mathematical modeling, efficient computational methods, and pervasive integration with data. This effort is fundamentally interdisciplinary. This conference aims to stimulate the exchange of ideas among geoscientific modelers, applied mathematicians, statisticians, and other scientists, fostering new research in the mathematical foundations with an impact on geoscience applications. END ...

New experiment translates quantum information between technologies in an important step for the quantum internet

New experiment translates quantum information between technologies in an important step for the quantum internet
2023-03-24
Researchers have discovered a way to “translate” quantum information between different kinds of quantum technologies, with significant implications for quantum computing, communication, and networking. The research, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, was funded by the Army Research Office (ARO), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), and the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks (HQAN), which is led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It represents a new way to convert quantum information from the format used by quantum computers to the format needed ...

NASA prepares for historic asteroid sample delivery on Sept. 24

NASA prepares for historic asteroid sample delivery on Sept. 24
2023-03-24
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is cruising back to Earth with a sample it collected from the rocky surface of asteroid Bennu. When its sample capsule parachutes down into the Utah desert on Sept. 24, OSIRIS-REx will become the United States’ first-ever mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth.   After seven years in space, including a nail-biting touchdown on Bennu to gather dust and rocks, this intrepid mission is about to face one of its biggest challenges yet: deliver the asteroid sample to Earth while protecting it from heat, vibrations, and earthly contaminants.     “Once the sample capsule touches down, our team ...

11 ways to improve airlines for customers

11 ways to improve airlines for customers
2023-03-24
COLUMBIA, Mo— The name of the game is customer satisfaction, especially in the airline industry where companies are constantly jockeying for business by promising better service than their competitors. Now a professor at the University of Missouri has used artificial intelligence to sort through thousands of customer reviews and identify where airlines are falling short. Sharan Srinivas, an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Department of Marketing, used AI to analyze nearly 400,000 unique, ...

New mining technology uses CO2 as tool to access critical minerals

2023-03-24
A mining technology pioneered by researchers at the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin could reduce the amount of energy needed to access critical minerals vital for modern energy technologies and capture greenhouse gases along the way. Transitioning the world’s energy to technologies and sources with low-carbon emissions will take, in part, tremendous amounts of lithium, nickel, cobalt and other critical minerals that exist in low concentrations in the Earth’s crust. Mining those elements takes much energy and produces waste, which can negatively affect the environment and create significant amounts of greenhouse ...

Wastewater to energy: new treatment process can improve biorefinery sustainability

Wastewater to energy: new treatment process can improve biorefinery sustainability
2023-03-24
Wastewater from biorefineries that convert plants into fuel is full of organic materials that cannot be efficiently treated with conventional wastewater systems, making it costly and energy-intensive to manage. However, those rich organic materials are an untapped source of chemical energy that can be recovered as valuable products, including biogas, a clean-burning renewable fuel. A study by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) found that recovering resources from wastewater can substantially improve the economic and environmental sustainability of second-generation ...

U.S. Department of Energy and Stellantis announce the Battery Workforce Challenge

U.S. Department of Energy and Stellantis announce the Battery Workforce Challenge
2023-03-24
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Stellantis today announced the launch of the Battery Workforce Challenge, which includes a three-year collegiate engineering competition; vocational training; youth education in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM); and career and technical education.   DOE has set a bold target to address the climate crisis and puts our nation on a path to achieve net-zero emissions, economy-wide, by 2050 for the benefit of all Americans. Key to this target goal are the design and development of advanced batteries to electrify ...

Study finds higher risk of sleep problems in gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth

2023-03-24
Toronto, ON - A new national study, published in LGBT Health, finds that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth are twice as likely to report trouble falling or staying asleep than their straight peers. Greater depression, stress, and family conflict contribute to the sleep problems of LGB youth. “Young people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual may face discrimination and negative attitudes because of their sexual orientation. These experiences can make it harder for them to get a good night’s sleep,” says lead author, Jason Nagata, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. “Difficulties getting ...

UW researchers identify cell type that could be key to preventing marrow transplant complication

2023-03-24
A bone marrow transplant can be a lifesaving treatment for people with relapsed blood cancers, but a potentially lethal complication known as graft-versus-host disease put limitations on this procedure. New research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison is helping to change that by identifying the cell population that causes GVHD, a target that may make bone marrow transplants safer and more effective. An allogenic (from a donor) bone marrow transplant is a common treatment for blood cancers and other diseases of the immune system. During the transplant, the patient’s immune cells are replaced with the donor’s ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Are lifetimes of big appliances really shrinking?

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

Pinning down the process of West Nile virus transmission

UTA-backed research tackles health challenges across ages

In pancreatic cancer, a race against time

[Press-News.org] Where there’s smoke, there’s thiocyanate: McMaster researchers find tobacco users in Canada are exposed to higher levels of cyanide than other regions