| Welcome to Natural Hazards Forum. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| E-cigarettes 'should be on prescription' | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: 7 Feb 2018, 02:18 AM (63 Views) | |
| skibboy | 7 Feb 2018, 02:18 AM Post #1 |
|
E-cigarettes 'should be on prescription' 6 February 2018 ![]() E-cigarettes should be available on prescription, according to Public Health England (PHE). The agency wants them to be prescribed on the NHS within the next few years because of how successful they have been in helping people give up smoking. An independent review of the latest evidence, published by PHE, suggests at least 20,000 people a year are quitting with the help of e-cigarettes. The report also says they are at least 95% less harmful than smoking. PHE also wants hospitals to be able to sell e-cigarettes and have areas where patients can vape. This could even be in private rooms for patients on long hospital stays, it says. PHE also encouraged employers to provide vaping areas. In Wales, the Welsh Government had tried to ban the use of e-cigarettes in some enclosed places, including schools, hospitals and places selling food, fearing vaping would "re-normalise smoking". But the legislation failed at the last hurdle in 2016 after a row between Labour and Plaid. ![]() The review found vaping was of "negligible risk to bystanders" No e-cigarettes are currently licensed in the UK as a quit-smoking aid. And PHE is calling for "an easier route" for manufacturers to get a medicinal licence. "Anything that the [Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency] MHRA can do to make it easier for manufacturers we think would be helpful," said PHE health improvement director John Newton. The evidence review, which was carried out by independent tobacco experts, also found confusion over the risk posed by e-cigarettes. But Mr Newton said there was "overwhelming evidence" they were far safer than smoking and "of negligible risk to bystanders". "Almost half of smokers have never tried an e-cigarette possibly because they have views about how risky they are which are not founded on the evidence. "We really want to get the message out that they really should consider using an e-cigarette because they're a lot better for them than continuing to smoke," he said. ![]() Ann McNeil, professor of tobacco addiction at King's College London and lead author of the report, said it was "of great concern" that smokers still had "such a poor understanding" about what caused the harm from smoking. "When people smoke tobacco cigarettes, they inhale a lethal mix of 7,000 smoke constituents, 70 of which are known to cause cancer," she said. "The constituents in tobacco smoke that cause the harm are either absent or at much lower levels... in e-cigarettes so we are confident that they are substantially less harmful than cigarette smoking. "People smoke for the nicotine - but contrary to what the vast majority believe, nicotine causes little if any of the harm. "The toxic smoke is the culprit and is the overwhelming cause of all the tobacco-related disease and death." The review also found there was little evidence to suggest that e-cigarettes were leading young people into smoking. The research suggests less than 1% of young people who have never smoked use e-cigarettes regularly and the number of young people smoking continues to decline at an "encouraging" rate. Source: .com
|
![]() |
|
| skibboy | 8 Feb 2018, 02:57 AM Post #2 |
|
08 February 2018 Vaping may boost pneumonia risk: study ![]() © AFP/File / by Mariëtte Le Roux | A research team noticed a sharp increase in the amount of bacteria sticking to airway cells after e-cigarette exposure; Such adhesion has previously been shown to increase susceptibility to disease PARIS (AFP) - Vaping may help pneumonia-causing bacteria stick to cells lining the airways, likely boosting disease risk, researchers said Thursday. A study published in the European Respiratory Journal did not directly compare vaping's effect to that of smoking tobacco cigarettes. But the findings did suggest that users of electronic cigarettes may be at higher risk of lung infection than people who do not vape, the research team reported. "If you choose to take up e-cigarettes... this indicates a red flag that there may be an increased susceptibility" to pneumococcal bacteria, study co-author Jonathan Grigg of the Queen Mary University of London told AFP. Grigg and a team conducted three types of experiment. One exposed human nose lining cells to e-cigarette vapour in the lab, another involved mice inhaling vapour and then being exposed to pneumococcal bacteria, the main cause of pneumonia. A third trial studied the nose lining of 11 e-cigarette users compared to six non-vapers. The team noticed a sharp increase in the amount of bacteria sticking to airway cells after e-cigarette exposure. Such adhesion has previously been shown to increase susceptibility to disease. "Some people may be vaping because they think it is totally safe, or in an attempt to quit smoking, but this study adds to growing evidence that inhaling vapour has the potential to cause adverse health effects," said Grigg. "By contrast, other aids to quitting such as (nicotine) patches or gum do not result in airway cells being exposed to high concentrations of potentially toxic compounds." - Less harmful? - Last month, a US study said vaping may increase cancer risk because it leads to DNA damage, despite containing fewer carcinogens than tobacco smoke. That study, too, did not compare the effects of cigarette smoking directly to vaping. Research in the journal Tobacco Control last October said a large-scale switch from tobacco to e-cigarettes would prevent millions of premature deaths by the year 2100, even assuming the gadgets are themselves not risk-free. E-cigarettes, said to contain no tar and fewer toxins than tobacco cigarettes, were developed as a safer alternative to tobacco smoking. But many people fear that a harmless veneer may make e-cigarettes a "gateway" for young people to lifelong nicotine addiction. Commenting on the latest study, Peter Openshaw, an experimental medicine professor at Imperial College London, said any evidence that vaping raised lung infection risk was "only indirect". "Although it is possible that vaping might increase susceptibility to pneumonia, the effect is likely to be lower than from smoking itself," he said via the Science Media Centre. "This study should not be used as a reason to continue to smoke rather than vape - the evidence to date is that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than smoking." by Mariëtte Le Roux Source: .com
|
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · Disease · Next Topic » |






.com




.com

3:25 PM Jul 11