E-cigarettes on the rise among Rochester teens

ROCHESTER — E-cigarette usage has become a significant public health concern across the nation, especially among youth.

The battery-operated devices, also known as vaporizers, have surpassed traditional cigarettes as the most commonly used tobacco product among youth — with more than one-third of young adults having tried them, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although e-cigarette use within Rochester Community Schools’ middle and high schools isn’t exactly new, police liaison officer Amy Drehmer said she has noticed a steady increase, especially over the last year. She updated the Rochester City Council on the issue during its May 8 meeting.

“It’s such a huge problem right now,” Drehmer said. “I had a kid the other day who I confiscated his e-cigarette that we found at school and he said, ‘You’re taking her from me?’ I said, ‘Yeah. What do you mean? It has a gender?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s Stacey.’ That’s how into these e-cigarettes they are. They even give them names.”

E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that heat up nicotine with flavorings and other chemicals and supply them to the user in a vapor instead of smoke.

Although e-cigarettes are often promoted as a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes, Drehmer said there’s still a lot we don’t know about the health risks associated with usage.

“Sellers are luring the kids in by selling the bubblegum and watermelon (flavors) and saying it is safer than cigarette smoke, but anytime you burn a chemical and then you inhale it into your lungs, it’s not safe,” she explained.

Depending on the brand, e-cigarette cartridges typically contain nicotine, a component to produce the aerosol and flavorings. Potentially harmful constituents have been documented in some e-cigarette cartridges, including irritants, genotoxins and animal carcinogens, according to the CDC.

Along with nicotine-laced products, teens have also been known to use e-cigarettes for illegal substances — like the synthetic drug Cloud 9 and marijuana — according to Drehmer.

“A synthetic drug, pretty much the only way to describe it is a mad scientist is in their garage mixing up stuff to get kids high, and that is really what it is,” Drehmer said. “When we talk about synthetics, the problem is these mad scientists are one step above the law. Once the law comes out that we are going to ban these synthetics, they already have their next potion to roll back out at the gas stations. … We have no idea what they look like, and they are odorless.”

The e-cigarette devices are so small that Drehmer said teens can easily hide them in their hands, pockets or wallets. Because their vapor is colorless and often odorless, Drehmer said, it is hard to detect, and teens have been so bold as to smoke them in school parking lots, bathrooms and even in class.

In an effort to curtail e-cigarette usage among teens, she said, the Rochester Police Department is urging the City Council to tighten up its possession of tobacco by minors and e-cigarette ordinances.

“Our ordinances, when they were first adopted a few years ago, I felt like they were appropriate,” Drehmer said. “But now, it has skyrocketed — the use of these cigarettes. The FDA has said that it has gone up three times in the last couple of years, the usage by teenagers.”

Under the city’s current ordinances, minors caught in possession of e-cigarettes or those caught selling the devices to minors are charged with a municipal civil infraction, which includes a maximum penalty of a $50 fine.

Rochester City Attorney Jeffrey Kragt said the proposed changes — which the council was scheduled to vote on May 22 — would increase the fines from $50 to $100, add a provision for community service to be part of any conviction, and create a two-tiered penalty provision to allow for handling second-offense violations as misdemeanor offenses. He said a first-offense violation of use or possession would remain a civil infraction. Under the proposed changes, penalties for selling, giving or furnishing tobacco or e-cigarettes to a minor would also be upgraded from a civil infraction to a misdemeanor.

Many on the council were surprised to hear of Drehmer’s experiences with e-cigarette usage among teens in the schools.

“Truthfully, this is really sad news to me,” said Mayor Pro Tem Kim Russell.

“In terms of the places in town to get this, there is not that many, from what I understand,” Councilman Ben Giovanelli added. “But we can’t control what goes on in the greater environment around us.”

Drehmer said the Rochester Police Department frequents local gas stations to keep an eye on what they are selling.

“We know what they have in there, but there are a lot of what they call head shops or smoke shops. You can drive anywhere and see vaporizer shops,” she said.

Drehmer hopes the enhanced penalties provide a greater deterrent toward combating the problem.

“This is a start, so that when we encounter them at the Police Department, we have some stronger ordinances,” she said.

Resource : http://www.candgnews.com/news/e-cigarettes-rise-among-rochester-teens-101532

Essay: Sen-Sens and Cigarettes

Our view of our parents evolves as we get older - from believing they’re omnipotent to understanding they aren’t, and that they are fallible. Lake Effect essayist, Cari Taylor-Carlson, was an adolescent when a pack of cigarettes taught her a vital lesson about her mother.

Kids are supposed to believe everything their moms tell them. Right? Moms are supposed to always tell the truth. Right? That’s the line I believed when I was 11 and Mom said, “If you smoke even one cigarette, you will stunt your growth.” She said a lot more than that, but all I heard was “stunt your growth.” She lectured, pontificated about many subjects which related to behaving myself. Most of the time, like any kid, I turned deaf when she started one of her monologues.

But that word “stunt” crept into my brain as if I would be 4’9’, the 7th grade girl in brown and white saddle oxford shoes who spoke when no one listened, forever overlooked, surrounded by perfect popular girls.

Mom’s threat challenged me, a troublemaker who liked to push the boundaries of proper behavior. That’s why my friend Claudia and I stole a pack of Pall Malls, from my parent’s kitchen cupboard. Don’t tell me not to smoke. That’s an invitation to bring on the cigarettes.

This was the 50s. Everyone smoked. We were curious, liked the smell. When my mom smoked, she put on her happy face, especially when she took a deep breath and let a long swirl out her nose. My dad blew smoke rings, huge smoke rings, big enough for me to put my fist through. I decided if he could do it, so could I.

We hocked the cigarettes and headed for the woods behind my house where we knew no one would look for us. We used half a package of matches on the first cigarette, the more we tried, the more it fizzled, no matter how hard we sucked on the end. After Claudia finally got one lit, we smoked it down to the part where we were chewing tobacco. What was left was soggy, wet from our lips curled around the butt end.

When we finished, we buried the butt underneath some berry bushes. I got the giggles. That’s when Claudia said “Yuk. Your breath smells disgusting, like rotten eggs and wet tobacco. We can’t go home like this. Our parents will know.”

“Then let’s steal something at the drug store,” I said. “Let’s get something to make our breath smell better.”

We walked to Rexalls on Twelve-Mile Road, two blocks from my house, where I slipped some Sen-Sens in to my pocket. Big letters on the outside of the box read “Breath Freshener.” Problem solved.

The Sen-Sens came in a small cardboard container, like a kitchen match box with an inside compartment which slid out like a dresser drawer. It had a small hole on the bottom. When we shook it, little square things fell into our hands. We hid behind the magazine rack and forced ourselves to chew all the horrid so called breath fresheners, pellets which tasted like licorice, black jelly beans, black gum drops, Twizzlers, only worse, stronger, disgusting.

While we laughed and choked on the Sen-Sens, we failed to note the man behind the counter watching us. As I tossed the empty box in the wastebasket I heard a loud voice, “Wait, just a minute.”

He wrote down our names, addresses, and phone numbers, fished the box out of the trash and said, “Take this home; show it to your parents; tell them what you did.”

Not only did I have to return to the drugstore with an apology, pay for the stupid little Sen-Sens with my entire allowance from the last month, I also got the spanking of my life. I had a purple butt from the spatula Mom used on me in her fury when she found out her child was a thief.

My bruised butt healed in a week. I secretly recorded my height on my bedroom wall and checked every day to see if I was growing. After two years and three inches, I stopped checking and decided Mom had lied. She gets high grades for creativity because even at 11, she suspected I fantasized myself someday tall, willowy, sexy.

I’m not sure the punishment matched the crime, or which was worse, the stolen cigarette I smoked, or the Sen Sen theft.

What I do know is this. Sometimes Moms are allowed to tell their children things which drop into the grey area of half-truths, which then land in the category of “This is for your own good.” My mom’s bluff, not fully understood until I had my own children, took on a life of its own as evidenced by my belief in the stunted growth theory.

Some part of Mom’s empty threat worked, because all my high school friends smoked. I refused to try another cigarette until I was eighteen, certain I had reached my full adult height, 5’5”.

Resource : http://wuwm.com/post/essay-sen-sens-and-cigarettes-0#stream/0

Carreras commends police for counterfeit cigarette bust

 KINGSTON, Jamaica — Carreras Limited is commending the St James Street Crime Unit and the Counter Terrorism and Organized Crime Investigation Branch (C-TOC) of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) for a bust last week of 58 cartons of counterfeit Craven A cigarettes.

In a media release, the cigarette distribution company said the seized items had an estimated street value of $545,200 and represented “significant headway in the fight against illicit cigarettes”.

Carreras singled out C-TOC for particular praise, saying the branch has been relentless in its efforts to stamp out the illegal trade in cigarette products, which now account for almost 20 per cent of the total cigarette market in Jamaica.

Managing director of Carreras Limited, Marcus Steele, was quoted in the release as saying: “The recent dramatic hike in the Special Consumption Tax on cigarettes has provided even greater fuel to the illicit trade in cigarettes, which only gets more lucrative with increasing levels of taxation on cigarettes implemented by the Government. This unfortunately equates to more revenues lost by the Government, which we estimate to be almost $2 billion annually"

Resource : http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Carreras-commends-police-for-counterfeit-cigarette-bust

CEI E-Cigarette Lawsuit Takes on Activist Agencies

The battle over electronic cigarettes heats up even more this week as the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s general counsel Sam Kazman argued in court today against a federal regulation banning use of electronic cigarettes on planes. The lawsuit, filed by CEI and the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association (CASAA), says the Department of Transportation overstepped its authority when it decided to prohibit vaping on all airplanes. People may think health concerns must have spurred the regulator crackdown, but that is contrary to all the scientific evidence showing that vaping is relatively safe in the short term and certainly less harmful than smoking traditional cigarettes.

Until the DOT decided to ban the use of vapes on a plane (alleging that vaping counts as smoking), airlines were fully able to prohibit their use and most did. However, in March 2016, the agency decided to impose a new prohibition under Congress’s anti-smoking airlines statute. The agency did this despite the fact the DOT itself admitted five years earlier that e-cigarettes neither burn tobacco nor produce smoke and without providing evidence of harm to passengers.

So, if the ban wasn’t necessary, why did they do it? Sure, the sometimes fragrant vapor and a fear of unknown risks might make fellow passengers uncomfortable. This, of course, is why most airlines voluntarily barred vaping on planes already. But I would argue that the motivation of regulators has nothing to do with protecting airline passengers’ health and more to do with scaring consumers away from vaping.

Despite the fact that almost every single study to look at the actual health effects of vaping has found them to be much less harmful than traditional cigarettes, advocates—in and outside of the government—want Americans to think they are just as deadly as regular cigarettes, which kill upwards of half their users.

In 2016 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) deemed electronic cigarettes tobacco products, putting them under the same onerous pre-market approval requirements as traditional cigarettes, despite the fact that e-cigarettes contain no tobacco. By the FDA’s own admission, this will eliminate around 98 percent of the existing e-cigarettes on the market.

Most recently, as I wrote, the Surgeon General’s office released its first report on vapes, calling the products “a public health threat” and urging an increase in “evidence-based messages about the health risks of e-cigarette use.”

Much of this fear seems to stem from the overly-precautionary approach taken by many health agencies. They can’t get in trouble for what they don’t permit in the first place, right? And, many health advocates and activists do their part to stoke fears. Some anti-smoking researchers have been trying desperately to find any evidence for possible long-term risks associated with vaping. But these efforts are far from “evidence based.” For example, a recent study found that vaping caused temporary arterial stiffness and has been used by many—including researchers who know better—to say that vaping is “as bad for the heart as cigarettes.” Yet, the study merely demonstrated what scientists already knew; that nicotine causes arterial stiffness, just as caffeine, exercise, and even stress do. Arterial stiffness, in and of itself, does not increase the chances of developing cardiovascular disease. Yet, even the study’s authors are intentionally trying to spread this misconception.

When most airlines already banned vaping on planes for the comfort of their passengers, why would DOT feel the need to step in and—without authority—force that decision on all airlines? Are they trying to stoke consumer fears about the second-hand effect of vaping and trying to further connect vapes with traditional cigarettes? While their motives might be good (if they genuinely believe vaping has risks) the effects will almost certainly be extremely unhelpful should they succeed.

Nicotine itself appears to be relatively harmless, or at least, no more harmful than caffeine. However, as our government’s agencies scare consumers off of vaping and eliminate the incentives current smokers have to switch from cigarettes to e-cigarettes, the more people will continue their deadly smoking habit and the more of them will die. DOT, the FDA, and the Surgeon General ought to keep their noses out of this and let scientists, private businesses, and consumers make up their own minds about the risks and benefits of switching to e-cigarettes. 

Resource :https://cei.org/blog/cei-e-cigarette-lawsuit-takes-activist-agencies

Cigarette tax hike, food sales tax cut fail to pass muster in Kansas House

Rep. Henry Helgerson, D-Wichita, failed to win backing for an amendment elevating the state’s per-pack tax on cigarettes from $1.29 to $2.79. His plan was to create more financial incentive for people to stop smoking and to generate new revenue to help reduce the long-term unfunded liability in the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System. (File photo illustration/The Capital-Journal)

Members of the Kansas House rejected Monday amendments to bills that would more than double the state’s sales tax on cigarettes and eliminate a handful of sales tax exemptions to find $56 million to pay for a 1 cent reduction in the state’s tax on food.

House members also granted final approval to legislation upgrading regulation of amusement park facilities in wake of a fatality during 2016 at Schlitterbahn Waterpark in Kansas City, Kan. Caleb Schwab, the son of Rep. Scott Schwab, eid while riding the park’s 168-foot-tall Verruckt slide.

The water slide bill was sent to the Senate on a vote of 124-1, with the dissenting vote cast by Rep. Jack Thimesch, R-Cunningham.

On tax policy, Rep. Henry Helgerson, D-Wichita, failed to win backing for an amendment elevating the state’s per-pack tax on cigarettes from $1.29 to $2.79. His plan was to create financial incentive for people to stop smoking and to generate revenue to reduce the long-term unfunded liability in the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System.

“If someone has a better way to reduce KPERS, I’d like them to bring it down,” Helgerson said.

Rep. Steven Johnson, an Assaria Republican who chairs the House Tax Committee, and Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita, spoke in opposition to Helgerson’s plan. Johnson said another tobacco tax hike might be on the horizon, but Senate Bill 96 was the wrong vehicle. Carmichael said hitting Kansas with one more sales tax increase would be improper, despite indirect health benefits of a higher tax on cigarettes.

“Do I want to raise a terribly regressive tax?” Carmichael said. “I suggest that is terribly wrong.”

In January, Gov. Sam Brownback recommended the 2017 Legislature approve tax increases on tobacco and liquor to help contain a budget deficit. He proposed a $1 increase in the per-pack tax rate on cigarettes. To close a 2015 budget deficit, the Legislature and Brownback agreed on a 50-cent-a-pack increase on cigarettes.

Rep. John Whitmer, R-Wichita, offered an amendment — defeated 32-85 — to reduce the state’s sales tax on food to 5.5 percent. In 2015, Brownback and legislators hoisted the sales tax to 6.5 percent to generate operating revenue.

Whitmer said $56 million needed to finance shrinkage of the food sales tax would come from deleting sales tax exemptions on lottery tickets, bingo cards, custom computer software, dues paid zoo organizations, drill bits and explosives used for energy exploration, and other sales.

“I’ve tried to pick the ones that were low-hanging fruit,” Whitmer said. “Sales tax on food is regressive.”

Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, said the state’s unreasonably long list of sales tax exemptions should be overhauled by legislative committees sorting through implications of each change. Adjusting tax exemptions on the House floor without input from Kansans isn’t prudent, he said.

Resource :http://cjonline.com/news/local/state-government/2017-04-02/cigarette-tax-hike-food-sales-tax-cut-fail-pass-muster-kansas

Researchers report new method to measure free radicals in cigarette smoke

Smoking cigarettes can lead to illness and death. Free radicals, which are atoms or groups of atoms with unpaired electrons, in inhaled smoke are thought to be partly responsible for making smokers sick. Now researchers from Penn State College of Medicine and College of Agricultural Sciences report a method for measuring free radicals in cigarette smoke that could help improve our understanding of the relationship between these substances and health.

John Richie, professor of public health sciences and pharmacology is lead investigator. The study, "Variation in Free Radical Yields from U.S. Marketed Cigarettes" appears in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) journal, Chemical Research in Toxicology.

Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Understanding why is a challenge, given that cigarette smoke is a complex mixture of more than 7,000 compounds. Much of the blame has been placed on the 93 cigarette-related carcinogens and toxins on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's list of hazardous and potentially hazardous chemicals. But previous studies have reported that risk assessments based on these compounds underestimate the actual number of illnesses caused by smoking. Accounting for free radicals, which are known to cause oxidative damage in the body, could help fill that gap. But they are not listed on the FDA's list and are difficult to study because they don't stick around for long. So Richie and colleagues wanted to find a reliable way to measure free radicals in cigarette smoke.

The researchers developed a standardized protocol for measuring free radicals in smoke first by using a control cigarette and a technique called electron paramagnetic resonance spectrometry. They then applied the same protocol to 27 varieties of commercial cigarettes. The study found that the levels of gas-phase radicals ranged widely across the varieties while particulate-phase radicals showed less variability. An analysis of potential factors accounting for the differences found that highly ventilated cigarettes tended to produce lower levels of both gas- and particulate-phase free radicals. The researchers say their method could be used to assess people's exposure to free radicals and help determine potential health effects.

Resource  :http://www.news-medical.net/news/20170404/Researchers-report-new-method-to-measure-free-radicals-in-cigarette-smoke.aspx

Govt releases new pictorial warnings for tobacco products

Replacing the existing images, the Health Ministry has released a new set of pictorial warnings for mandatory display on packets of cigarettes, bidis, and chewing tobacco with effect from April 1 this year.


Replacing the existing images, the Health Ministry has released a new set of pictorial warnings for mandatory display on packets of cigarettes, bidis, and chewing tobacco with effect from April 1 this year.

Under the new rules, manufacturers will now need to display graphic pictures of throat cancer on cigarette and bidi packets and pictures of mouth cancer on chewing tobacco packets.

According to the public notice on the Health Ministry's website, the government notified the new health warnings on October 15, 2014 and issued a notification dated September 24, 2015 for mandatory display of new health warnings covering 85 percent of the principal display area on all tobacco products from April 1, 2016.

"As per Rules, during the rotation period of 24 months, two images of specified health warnings as notified in the Schedule, shall be displayed on all tobacco product packages and each of the images shall appear consecutively on the package with an interregnum period of 12 months.

"Further as per notification dated March 24, 2017, all tobacco products manufactured on or after April 1, 2017 shall display the second image of specified health warning," the notice said.

It further said any person engaged directly or indirectly in production, supply, import or distribution of cigarettes or any other tobacco products shall ensure that all tobacco product packages have these specified health warnings.

"Violation of the provisions is a punishable offence with imprisonment or fine as prescribed under section 20 of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act 2003," it said.

India is third among countries with the largest pictorial warnings on tobacco products, according to a recent report.
The Health Ministry has implemented, from April 2016, large pictorial health warnings occupying 85 percent of the principal display area of tobacco packs and on all forms of tobacco.


Resource :http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/markets-business/govt-releases-new-pictorial-warnings-for-tobacco-products-2252215.html

New study suggests potential risk with e-cigarettes

(KXXV) -Many smokers have turned to e-cigarettes and vapes as an alternative to traditional tobacco products.

A new study suggests that these products are not without risks of their own.

 According to Dr. Donald Cross, Director of Cardiology of Baylor Scott & White Medical Center-Hillcrest, currently there is not much medical research on the effects.

"The e-cigarette is fairly new and scientifically we really don't know so we're starting to collect that data."

In a recent study from The Journal of the American Medical Association, they found habitual users of electronic cigarettes are more likely to show increased cardiovascular risks.

"The nicotine that's aerosolized in the e-cigarette may have some detrimental effects to the heart just like you get from the cigarette," Cross said. "If people are thinking the e-cigarette is something they are going to use lifelong because it's safe for them this research really brings this into question."

Many of the juices or liquids used in the e-cigarettes are offered with nicotine. The amount varies allowing users to cut down on their intake or eliminate it completely. Right now, Dr. Cross says that may be the most heart healthy choice.

"This study suggests more research needs to be done and we can't think that the e-cigarette is completely safe," he said.

Copyright 2017 KXXV. All rights reserved

Resource : http://www.kxxv.com/story/34483264/new-study-suggests-potential-risk-with-e-cigarettes

Report: A quarter of teenagers who use e-cigarettes have tried ‘dripping’

In 2003, after his father died from a tobacco habit, a Chinese pharmacist named Hon Lik developed an electronic device to vaporize nicotine. A precursor to what are now called e-cigarettes or vaporizers, the device’s goal was to deliver nicotine without the carcinogens.

Mr. Lik’s first attempt relied on ultrasonic technology to create vapor, but the guts of electronic cigarettes today are, as a rule, battery-powered heating coils. These coils, known as atomizers, turn liquids — often flavored, with nicknames like e-liquid or juice, and frequently but not always containing nicotine — into vapor.

As e-cigarettes grew in popularity in the mid-to-late 2000s, users did not stop tinkering with the technology. Mass-produced cartridges, pre-filled with the nicotine liquid of various concentrations, are common.

But one technique eschews the tanks or cartridges; the juice is manually dropped directly onto the coil, and the resulting vapor inhaled. (Devices can now be purchased specifically for this purpose, or modified.) The technique, called “dripping,” may be popular among teenage e-cigarette users, reported researchers last week in the journal Pediatrics.

In a survey of 7,000 high schoolers in Connecticut, just over 1,000 reported using e-cigarettes. Of these, 1 in 4 said they had tried dripping. The concern, the authors noted, was that teenagers may be attempting to drip but accidentally exposing themselves to unsafe levels of e-liquids. “What we are discovering with our work with youth is that kids are actually using these electronic products for other behaviors, not just for vaping e-liquids from cartridges or tanks,” said Yale University psychiatry professor Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, an author of the study, in a news release.

Between 2013 and 2014, rates of e-cigarette use by high schoolers increased from under 5 percent to 13.4 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found, at the same time as tobacco use dropped. In 2016, federal law banned children under the age of 18 from buying e-cigarettes. As the new study indicates, the law has not halted teen vaping. But it could not be said from the report whether dripping was increasing or decreasing in popularity among the teenage crowd — the report was the first to examine the practice of dripping, at all, among the high school set.

Ms. Krishnan-Sarin and her colleagues found that most of those who dripped did so to produce “thicker clouds of vapor.” But a few teens reported they dripped because it made the flavors “taste better” or produced a “stronger throat hit”; a fifth said they dripped out of curiosity.

In the paper, the researchers warned that dripping, instead of a “standard puff” of an e-cigarette, possibly exposed the teenagers to higher concentrations of vaporized nicotine. “Everybody assumes vaping is a safer way [than cigarettes] of administering nicotine,” Ms. Krishnan-Sarin said, “but we know so little about the risks of vaping.”

The degree of Mr. Lik’s success in removing the danger from nicotine delivery has been the subject of intense debate. Some studies indicate that it is possible for e-cigarettes to help users quit smoking; others counter that e-cigarettes might complement a conventional tobacco habit, or even desensitize teenagers who vape to the dangers of smoking. But e-cigarette proponents point out that the devices, because they omit the tar-producing combustion of tobacco, are preferable to cigarettes.

A new study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, also published last week, tracked the levels of nicotine and cancer-causing chemicals in 181 people, including e-cigarette users, former smokers who vape and cigarette smokers for six months. Those who restricted themselves to vaporizers or e-cigarettes only were exposed to lower levels of carcinogens. Former smokers who now only used e-cigarettes, for instance, had a 97.5 percent reduction of NNAL, the form of a tobacco-specific carcinogen that is excreted in urine.

“What we found is that using e-cigarettes alone results in very low exposure to toxins and carcinogens,” Lion Shahab, a health psychologist at University College London and an author of the Annals paper, told New Scientist on last week.

Almost all e-cigarette science comes with the caveat that more research is needed. Pinning down just how safe the technology is a challenge. One issue, noted Pennsylvania State University chemist Kurt Kistler to Motherboard in 2016, stems from the “huge variety of devices” used.

That variety is also reflected in nicotine delivery technique, like dripping over puffing. Research led by Virginia Commonwealth University’s Alan Shihadeh revealed that dripping at very high coil temperatures — between 266 degrees to upward of 662 degrees — produced “high toxicant emissions.”

“If I was in a torture chamber and you said I had to puff on something, I’d choose an e-cigarette over a regular cigarette,” Mr. Shihadeh told the New York Times in 2014. “But if you said I could choose an e-cigarette or clean air, I’d definitely choose clean air.” He went on to say: “And I definitely wouldn’t drip.”

Resource : http://www.post-gazette.com/news/health/2017/02/13/Report-A-quarter-of-teenagers-who-use-e-cigarettes-have-tried-dripping/stories/201702130073

Impacto diagnóstico prenatal en las cardiopatías congénitas

Se define como cardiopatía congénita a la malformación estructural o alteración funcional del corazón y sus grandes vasos, detectadas durante la gestación o presentes al momento de nacer y que se originan en las primeras semanas del embarazo por factores que actúan alterando el desarrollo embriológico del sistema cardiovascular.

Los embarazos de alto riesgo requieren una alta atención y excelente resolución para proveer un cuidado adecuado a través del mismo.

El tema es tratado por la cardióloga intervencionista del Centro de Diagnóstico, Medicina Avanzada y Telemedicina (Cedimat), Janet Toribio, quien trabaja con niños con enfermedades cardiovasculares, junto a un equipo de experimentados cardiólogos pediatras.

Las cardiopatías congénitas son las malformaciones más frecuentes, con una prevalencia de 8 a 10 por 1000 recién nacidos vivos, que es igual a decir que son el 1%.

Sin embargo estas estadísticas no toman en cuenta los abortos que en su mayoría obedecen a fetos con cardiopatias severas, ni las simples que pasan desapercibidas, por tanto, se puede afirmar que la prevalencia de las cardiopatías es mucho mayor.

El diagnóstico

A pesar de que el exemen ecocardiográfico fetal del segundo trimestre, en busca de defectos congénitos es una práctica ampliamente difundida en la mayor parte del mundo, la detección de cardiopatías congénitas en la población general por éste método ha mostrado una tasa de detección baja del 15 al 45 % (en paises desarrollados).

Así mismo, se ha demostrado que el 90 % de cardiopatias detectadas intraútero, no tenían alto riesgo. Por tal motivo, sigue aún en discusión si sólo se debe indicar ecocardiograma fetal a las embarazadas con alto riesgo o a todas.

La doctora dijo que la mayoría de las cardiopatía tienen un origen multifactorial, pero existen algunas indicaciones precisas de ecocardiograma fetal, lo que implica que tienen condiciones de alto riesgo, las que a su vez aumentan las posibilidades de que el feto padezca una cardiopatía congénita.

Mirada a las causas

De este modo tenemos causas maternas o familiares y condiciones fetales, afirma la especialista en cardiopatías infantiles.

Dentro de las causas maternas las enfermedades metabólicas como la diabetes, ya sea como condición previa al embarazo o adquirida durante el embarazo y la mal controlada son capaces de causar grandes cardiopatías congénitas, asegura.

La así también Fenilcetonuria, las enfermedades del tejido conectivo como el Lupus Eritematoso Sistémico, cuyos fetos pueden padecer Bloqueo de su Sistema de conducción desde edades tempranas del embarazo y las mismas deben tener seguimiento de cerca.

Las edades maternas extremas, más de 35 años para el primer embarazo o adolescentes. Otra causa son los Teratógenos como el alcohol, drogas, la hookah, el acido retinoico, el litio que se usa en las madres para la depresión, los anticonvulsivantes (usados para la epilepsia).

Resource : http://eldia.com.do/impacto-diagnostico-prenatal-en-las-cardiopatias-congenitas/