Teen E-Cig Users More Likely to Smoke

Source: www.newswise.com Newswise — As e-cigarette usage among high school students continues to climb, a recent study from The Journal of the American Medical Association reveals an unsettling trend: that adolescent e-cigarette users are more likely than their non-vaping peers to initiate use of combustible tobacco products such as cigarettes, cigars and hookahs. The reason may lie in a common denominator between e-cigarettes and their combustible counterparts: nicotine. While the study hints that more research is needed to determine if this association is merely casual, it’s important to note that while e-cigarettes don’t contain tobacco, the battery-powered devices do deliver nicotine in aerosol form. “Nicotine’s addictive properties are a risk for any age group, but with adolescents, the stakes are even higher,” says Dr. K. Vendrell Rankin, director of Texas A&M University Baylor College of Dentistry’s Tobacco Treatment Services. For teens, mental health as well as key emotional and cognitive systems are at stake. “Major cognitive functions and attention performance are still in the process of developing during adolescence,” says Rankin, also a professor and associate chair in public health sciences at TAMBCD. “Nicotine increases the risk of developing psychiatric disorders and lasting cognitive impairment and is associated with disturbances in working memory and attention. Reliance on nicotine to manage negative emotions and situations impairs the development of coping skills.” In addition to affecting the emotional and cognitive development of teens, nicotine is highly addictive. In fact, the younger a person is when they begin using nicotine, the more likely they [...]

2015-08-21T11:16:40-07:00August, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

HPV Connected to Oral Cancers Too

Source: Chicago Tribune It's common knowledge that HPV — or human papillomavirus — is linked with cervical cancer, thanks to the controversy over the vaccine. But far fewer people know that this same sexually transmitted viral strain is connected to oral cancers, according to a new study, recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. For years, clinicians thought these kinds of cancer — affecting the tongue and tonsil areas — were almost exclusively caused by tobacco use, since they mostly struck heavy smokers and drinkers. But according to Dr. Maura Gillison, an oncologist and researcher at Ohio State University, it's not cigarettes that are the culprit, but oral sex. The good news: Most people with oral HPV will never develop cancer. Dr. Ezra Cohen, a specialist in head, neck, thyroid and salivary gland cancers at the University of Chicago, helped explain what it all means: Q. In general, mouth cancers are increasing? A. Oropharynx cancer is on the rise dramatically. It's gone up 3 percent a year for the last three decades and will surpass all other sites for head and neck cancers. Q. And HPV-positive oral cancers? A. They will surpass cervical cancers within the next three years. It's only relatively recently that we've come to realize the scope of HPV-related cancers. Q. What have we learned from this study? A. Quite a lot, actually. It told us about prevalence — that about 7 percent of adults in the U.S. are infected with oral HPV... and [...]

2012-02-15T10:45:22-07:00February, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Oral Sex Cancer Virus More Common in Men Than Women, Study Finds

Source: Bloomberg.com About 10 percent of men and 3.6 percent of women are orally infected with human papillomavirus, which is acquired through oral sex and can cause cancer. There are two peaks in the age people are infected -- 30 to 34 and 60 to 64, according to the study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The virus is linked to throat cancer, and is becoming a more common cause of the disease as Americans quit smoking. The virus, called HPV, is the most-common sexually transmitted virus in the U.S., where half the population will be infected at some time in their lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is known to cause cervical, vulvar, vaginal, penile and anal cancer. The higher HPV infection rate in men explains why their head and neck cancer rates are greater, said Maura Gillison, a professor at the Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus. “This provides pretty strong evidence that the higher infection rate is the reason why,” said Gillison, the study’s lead author, in a telephone interview. “This is a jumping board for additional research.” Besides sex, other demographics associated with oral HPV infection include age, lifetime number of sex partners, and the number of cigarettes smoked each day. The research is the first population-based study to examine how many men and women were infected, Gillison said. Existing Vaccines Though Merck & Co.’s Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK)’s Cervarix target genital HPV, it’s [...]

2012-01-26T10:10:18-07:00January, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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