(Press-News.org)
Nationwide, fewer people smoke than did a decade ago, but the proportion who smoke menthol-flavored cigarettes is on the rise.
More than 9 million adults, or about 32 percent of all smokers, use menthol cigarettes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Virginia, the proportion stands higher, at 38 percent.
A team of researchers including Roberta Freitas-Lemos, assistant professor at Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, found that if menthol products were unavailable, smokers found replacement therapies such as nicotine gum and lozenges were practical alternatives, potentially improving health outcomes for people who use menthol cigarettes.
The findings come from a study that examined what products adult smokers purchased in an experimental marketplace that adjusted prices and availability of tobacco and nicotine products.
“We were trying to understand how different flavor policies interact, the role of cigarette filter ventilation, and how different types of smokers would respond to those policies,” said Freitas-Lemos, who is with both the institute’s Center for Health Behaviors Research and Cancer Research Center in Roanoke. “We wanted to understand the effect of restrictions on purchases.”
The study, which published in the October issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, analyzed preferences for menthol-flavored cigarettes and e-cigarettes and the effect of filter ventilation options on purchase decisions.
What they did
Researchers analyzed data from 172 people who exclusively smoke cigarettes — 76 of whom smoke menthol and 96 non-menthol cigarettes — and 91 people who use multiple tobacco products. Participants were older than 21, smoked at least 10 cigarettes daily, and had smoked a minimum of 100 cigarettes in their lifetime.
The volunteers were asked to complete trial purchases in the Experimental Tobacco Marketplace, a tool addiction recovery research expert Warren Bickel created to study the effects of tax and regulatory policies on health behaviors. Bickel, who died in September, was a professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, director of its Addiction Recovery Research Center and Center for Health Behaviors Research, and one of the study’s principal investigators.
In the marketplace, participants used an account in an online platform to purchase tobacco and nicotine products, including replacement therapies. Options were tailored to each participant’s preferred flavors and nicotine concentrations, and they were given an account balance designed to reflect their personal budget constraints.
Research participants shopped for products under different market conditions — with varying prices and restricted or unrestricted cigarette or e-cigarette flavors.
What they found
When menthol cigarettes were not available, smokers who preferred menthol cigarettes were less willing to purchase any type of cigarettes and more willing to purchase products such as nicotine gum and other replacement therapies.
In addition, cigarette smokers who prefer menthol products were less likely to substitute e-cigarettes when menthol flavored e-cigarettes were also restricted.
For individuals in the study who use multiple tobacco products, restricting flavors had no impact on their purchases.
The study also found higher demand for cigarettes among smokers who preferred high-ventilation cigarettes — cigarettes with filter holes for airflow.
Why it matters
Menthol, a compound found in plants such as peppermint, is added to tobacco products to make them more appealing. In addition, menthol enhances nicotine’s effects and can make them more addictive.
Tobacco product design features, including flavors and cigarette filter ventilation, are subject to regulation by the Food and Drug Administration, which is why the study examined the effects of cigarette and e-cigarette flavors on demand and substitution by preferred cigarette flavor and ventilation.
An area that requires more investigation, Freitas-Lemos said, is the relationship between cigarette filter ventilation and smoking behavior, which could be connected to smokers’ perception of their cigarettes.
“Cigarettes with ventilation are milder and people think they are less harmful, but it is a false perception,” said Freitas-Lemos, who also holds an appointment as an assistant professor of psychology in the College of Science. One study showed higher rates of lung adenocarcinoma among people who smoke ventilated cigarettes.
“It could be that people who smoke ventilated cigarettes are more responsive to one ban than another,” said Freitas-Lemos, who noted that more research is needed to better understand how perception and ventilation influence behavior.
“I think the most important conclusion from this study is that we can improve health outcomes by emphasizing policies that reduce sales of flavored products and increase accessibility of nicotine replacement therapies,” Freitas-Lemos said.
END
Physicians are a vital component of the healthcare landscape and along with other medical professionals, they ensure timely diagnosis, treatment, and management of complex illnesses. They regularly work extended and overnight shifts, often at the cost of sleep. However, the long duty hours of physicians can lead to physical and mental exhaustion, resulting in negative consequences such as depression and burnout. Consequently, this can affect their level of alertness and thus the quality of patient care. To protect the health of Japanese physicians, a duty hour reform went into effect ...
Stem cells grown in microgravity aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have unique qualities that could one day help accelerate new biotherapies and heal complex disease, two Mayo Clinic researchers say. The research analysis by Fay Abdul Ghani and Abba Zubair, M.D., Ph.D., published in NPJ Microgravity, finds microgravity can strengthen the regenerative potential of cells. Dr. Zubair is a laboratory medicine expert and medical director for the Center for Regenerative Biotherapeutics at Mayo Clinic in Florida. Abdul Ghani is a Mayo Clinic research technologist. Microgravity is weightlessness ...
Toronto, ON, November 4, 2024 – People with a history of concussion face a 25% higher risk of having severe mental health issues after childbirth, according to a new study from ICES and the University of Toronto.
The research underscores the importance of identifying individuals with past concussions early in their prenatal care and highlights the need for long-term, trauma-informed support to safeguard their mental health.
“We found that individuals with a history of concussion were significantly more likely to experience serious mental health challenges, ...
ITHACA, N.Y. – A popular new strategy for combatting misinformation doesn’t by itself help people distinguish truth from falsehood but improves when paired with reminders to focus on accuracy, finds new Cornell University-led research supported by Google.
Psychological inoculation, a form of “prebunking” intended to help people identify and refute false or misleading information, uses short videos in place of ads to highlight manipulative techniques common to misinformation, such as emotional language, false dichotomies and scapegoating. The strategy has already been deployed ...
CAMBRIDGE, MA – Silicon transistors, which are used to amplify and switch signals, are a critical component in most electronic devices, from smartphones to automobiles. But silicon semiconductor technology is held back by a fundamental physical limit that prevents transistors from operating below a certain voltage.
This limit, known as “Boltzmann tyranny,” hinders the energy efficiency of computers and other electronics, especially with the rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies that demand faster computation.
In an effort to overcome this fundamental limit of silicon, MIT researchers fabricated a different type ...
When torrential rains and powerful winds hit densely populated coastal regions, whole cities can be destroyed—but governments and residents can take precautions with sufficient warning.
Many of these coastal deluges are caused by atmospheric rivers—regions of concentrated water vapor carried along on strong winds, sometimes called “rivers in the sky.” Meteorologists monitor them, but the ability to predict exactly how an atmospheric river might behave based on its underlying physics would offer more precise forecasts.
In a paper published today in Nature Communications, senior author Da Yang, assistant professor of geophysical sciences at the University ...
More children have overweight in regions with high rates of single parenthood, low education levels, low income and high child poverty. The pandemic may also have reinforced this trend. This is shown by a study conducted by researchers at Uppsala University and Region Sörmland in collaboration with Region Skåne.
“During and after the pandemic, we see a greater difference between regions in terms of children's weight. It even looks like it has exacerbated health inequalities,” explains ...
Researchers have identified 22 pesticides consistently associated with the incidence of prostate cancer in the United States, with four of the pesticides also linked with prostate cancer mortality. The findings are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.
To assess county-level associations of 295 pesticides with prostate cancer across counties in the United States, investigators conducted an environment-wide association study, using a lag period between exposure and prostate cancer incidence of 10–18 years to account for the slow-growing nature of most prostate cancers. The years 1997–2001 ...
The AI tool AlphaFold has been improved so that it can now predict the shape of very large and complex protein structures. Linköping University researchers have also succeeded in integrating experimental data into the tool. The results, published in Nature Communications, are a step toward more efficient development of new proteins for, among other things, medical drugs.
In all living organisms, there is a huge variety of proteins that regulate cell functions. Basically, everything that happens in the body, from controlling muscles and forming hair to transporting ...
**EMBARGOED UNTIL RELEASE MONDAY, NOV. 4, AT 1 A.M. ET**
Researchers including a Johns Hopkins University evolutionary biologist report they have analyzed a fossil of an extinct giant meat-eating bird — which they say could be the largest known member of its kind — providing new information about animal life in northern South America millions of years ago.
The evidence lies in the leg bone of the terror bird described in new paper published Nov. 4 in Palaeontology. The study was led by Federico J. Degrange, a terror bird ...