Head of the Service for the Prevention and Control of Smoking and Injuries at the Public Health Agency of Catalonia and member of the Board of Directors of the National Committee for the Prevention of Smoking
This Friday, the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System approved the Comprehensive Plan for the Prevention and Control of Smoking (PIT). The document, which incorporates 147 proposals from the autonomous communities, has not achieved consensus among all of them.
An international team of researchers has examined the epigenetic effects of tobacco and e-cigarettes over time in more than 3,500 samples. Their results indicate that e-cigarettes can also cause changes associated with an increased risk of cancer even shortly after starting to use them. They publish the study in the journal Cancer Research.
E-cigarettes combined with traditional therapies are more effective for smoking cessation than regular therapies alone, says a study conducted in Switzerland and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study involved two groups of about 600 participants each. At a 6-month control visit, 59.6% of the members of the e-cigarette group had not smoked tobacco in the previous week, compared to 38.5% in the control group.
A review including 126 studies shows an association between the use of social networking sites by 10-19 year olds and increased risk behaviours, including alcohol, tobacco and other drug use, risky sexual behaviour, gambling and antisocial behaviour. According to the authors, who acknowledge that their research does not establish causality, "precautions may need to be taken in academia, government, health and education before the risks of adolescent use of social networking sites are fully understood". The findings are published in The BMJ.