Tobacco Makers Must List Ingredients, Prove Safety Claims

Source: Businessweek.com Tobacco companies will have to begin reporting the amount of unsafe chemicals in their products and prove their so-called lower-risk alternatives to smoking such as snuff are actually safer, U.S. regulators said. The Food and Drug Administration moved today to implement pieces of a 2009 law giving the agency the authority to regulate tobacco products. The FDA released preliminary guidelines for the industry that it says can educate consumers on exactly what is in cigarettes, such as ammonia and formaldehyde, and police claims that certain tobacco products may be safer than others. The agency will share information on chemical amounts with the public within a year, Lawrence Deyton, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in a telephone call with reporters. On the issue of less-risky tobacco items, the draft guidelines set up two categories: one with a higher evidence standard that lets companies claim less harm than cigarettes; and another with a lower standard that permits companies to market products as reducing exposure to unsafe ingredients. “We are forging new territory to ensure that tobacco companies provide accurate information and do not mislead American consumers,” FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said in a statement. “We are committed to stopping such practices that may cause people to start or continue using tobacco products that could lead to preventable disease and death.” 93 Chemicals The FDA released a list of 93 chemicals that tobacco makers would have to report the quantity of in their products. The FDA is studying [...]

2012-04-02T09:56:47-07:00April, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

April: Oral Cancer Awareness Month

Source: Aspen Dental April is Oral Cancer Awareness Month. According to Brian Hill, founder and executive director of the Oral Cancer Foundation, as many as 40,000 people in the United States will be told they have oral or pharyngeal cancer in 2012. Some of them may be sitting in your dental chair today. With one person dying of oral cancer every hour of every day, and more than 50% of those diagnosed not living more than 5 years, this is a reminder to screen every patient yourself, and encourage your dental hygiene staff to do the same. The Statistics About 100 people are diagnosed with oral cancer every day in the United States. Few people are aware that the death rate for oral cancer is higher than for many other types of cancers, which is because oral cancer often is not discovered until it has reached later stages. This is particularly true for human papilloma virus number 16 (HPV16)-related oral cancer, which occurs most frequently in the posterior areas of the mouth—at the base of the tongue, around the tonsils, and in the oropharynx—where it’s harder to spot without a very thorough exam. To further complicate things, HPV16-related cancer does not always present the tell-tale physical characteristics, including lesions, that are easily distinguished from healthy oral tissues. This is not good news, because HPV16 has reached epidemic levels in the United States: of the 37,000 incidences of oral cancer, about 20,000 (up to 60%) can be linked to HPV, according [...]

2012-04-02T09:47:20-07:00April, 2012|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|

HPV Vaccine Reduces All Subtypes of HPV Disease

Source: Medscape.com Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination substantially reduced the risk for subsequent HPV disease in women who already had 1 bout of HPV-related disease, according to a study published online today in BMJ. "These are, to our knowledge, the first results in vaccinated women who have undergone treatment for HPV-related disease," write the authors, headed by Elmar Joura, MD, from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria. The data come from a subgroup of women who participated in trials of the quadrivalent HPV vaccine Gardasil (Merck & Co). Women who had HPV infection at the time of vaccination and who developed cervical, vulvar, or vaginal HPV disease had a substantially reduced risk of developing subsequent HPV-related disease after the first definitive treatment. HPV vaccination substantially reduced the risk for subsequent HPV disease — not only that caused by the 4 viral strains in the quadrivalent vaccine (HPV subtypes 6, 11, 16, and 18), but also that caused by other strains of HPV-related disease. This study "reinforces much of what we already know about the protective properties of the quadrivalent vaccine, including cross-protection against nonvaccine HPV types and vaccine benefit despite HPV exposure," writes Jane Kim, assistant professor of health decision science at Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, in an accompanying editorial. Subgroup of Women The study analyzed data collected from 2 large company-sponsored placebo-controlled trials of Gardasil, known as FUTURE I and FUTURE II. Together, they involved 17,622 women 15 to 26 years of age who were randomized to receive [...]

2012-04-02T09:21:38-07:00April, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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