80% of teens in favour of standardised cigarette packaging, survey shows

Nearly eight in ten teenagers in Britain think the government should introduce standardised cigarette packaging such as that used in Australia according to a survey published as peers prepare cross-party moves to revive proposals shelved by David Cameron.
Most teenagers in Australia, where packs are already almost covered in graphic warnings, believe this makes people less likely to smoke and want to see such measures taken in the rest of the world, said the British Heart Foundation (BHF).
The charity claimed health warnings on UK packs were "not up to the job" as it published results from its poll of 2000 13-18-year-olds in the UK and 500 in Australia, which last year became the first country to introduce tobacco packaging in a uniform brown colour along with the brand name and health warnings.
The coalition decided to put such measures on ice in Britain in July, saying ministers needed time to assess the impact such measures had had in Australia.
The BHF survey said just 36% of UK teenagers were deterred by current packs compared to 48% in Australia and that 77% of those quizzed in Britain thought the UK should have standardised packs. Australian teenagers supported the new packaging in their country (59%) and 66% wanted other countries to follow suit.
The charity said that "worryingly", 10% of British teenagers thought some cigarette brands were healthier than others - double the percentage of their Australian counterparts.
Simon Gillespie, its chief executive, said: "The message from our young people is loud and clear: current health warnings aren't up to the job and the UK government must step up to the mark and introduce standardised packs.
"Smoking kills 100,000 people in the UK every year and we simply can't wait any longer for legislation. Australia has led the way on standardised packs, the Scottish government has committed, and now the rest of the UK must act to protect future generations from a deadly habit."
Lib Dem Baroness Tyler, Conservative Lord McColl, crossbencher Baroness Finlay and Labour's Lord Faulkner will try to amend the Children and Families Bill at its Lords committee stage, which begins on Wednesday, so as to force the coalition into action. Finlay and Faulkner will also try to make it illegal for drivers to allow smoking in a private car when children are present.

Smoking in pregnancy results in children having smaller brain

These findings are according to newly published research, which had investigated over two hundred Dutch children between the ages of six and eight.
Researchers found that tobacco disrupts the development of the nervous system of the fetus. This happens partially because it blocks the growth of neurons and to some extent because smoking makes the blood vessels of the fetus narrow.
In the study, half of the mothers smoked but half did not. The mothers, who smoked constantly, found that even after their child was eight years old, they still had drastically smaller brains. Likewise, higher amounts of depression and anxiety were present since their brains’ superior frontal cortex, the part which controls mood swings, had been created more poorly.
However, there was no clear link between the amount of cigarettes smoked. Participants smoked between one and nine per day, still it was noted that the length of time the mother-to-be was smoking was vital. A total of 17 women quit smoking once they found out they were pregnant. Research indicated that these children were not affected by their mother’s past addiction if they stopped early enough.
“Importantly, brain development in offspring of mothers who quit smoking during pregnancy resembled that of [mothers who never smoked] with no smaller brain volumes and no thinning of the cortex,” said head researcher Hanan El Marroun.
For the study, the children had to have MRI scans done. “Children exposed to tobacco throughout pregnancy have smaller total brain volumes and smaller cortical grey matter volumes,” El Marroun said and then added, “Continued prenatal tobacco exposure was associated with cortical thinning, primarily in the superior frontal, superior parietal and precentral cortices.”
Commenting on the research, Dr. Simon Newell of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in London said, “What was striking about this study was the alarming effect smoking had on the brain over six years later.”

Smoking Affects Molecular Mechanisms And Thus Children’s Immune Systems

The Leipzig Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research has gained new insights on the influence of tobacco smoke in utero. For the first time, it could be demonstrated with smoking pregnant women and their children, how exposure to tobacco smoke affects the development of human immune system on molecular level. The focus thereby was on microRNA – a short, single-stranded RNA molecule that is now recognised as playing an important role in gene regulation.
For some time now, the impact of environmental stressors during pregnancy on allergy risk among new-born children is a main research topic at Leipzig Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ). As part of the long-term study LINA, environmental immunologists from Leipzig have been focussing on tobacco smoke as an environmental stressor. The main objective for Dr Gunda Herberth was to reveal the influence of tobacco smoke on the development of children’s immune systems – at molecular level. From the results that were recently published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, one thing is certain: “For the first time we were able to describe the effect of prenatal environmental stressors on the regulation of microRNA.”
Former studies have already proven that smoking during pregnancy can harm the unborn child: Newborns from smoking mothers have shown low birth weights and impaired lung functions; later on in life respiratory diseases, diabetes type II, asthma or cardiovascular diseases were also more common. However, the exact molecular mechanisms and processes that are behind such developments still struggle researchers.
For this reason, Dr. Gunda Herberth and Dr. Irina Lehmann from the UFZ decided to address the relatively recent research area of microRNA. From the early 1990´s these cell components started to become more and more of a focus in molecular and cell biology. In the meantime, for humans more than 1,200 different short, single-stranded RNA molecules have been named, some of them playing an important role in immune response. Among others, they have a considerable influence on the differentiation of regulatory T cells (Treg cells), which in turn prevent an overactive immune system and thus autoimmune diseases. If there are insufficient Treg cells or if their function is impaired, the self-regulatory function of the immune system will be reduced, possibly resulting in allergies.
To investigate the relationship between smoking mothers during pregnancy on the one hand and their children´s risk of developing allergies on the other, the scientists from Leipzig examined microRNA-223, microRNA-155 and regulatory T cells – not only in the blood samples of pregnant women (36 weeks pregnant) but also at birth in the cord blood of their babies. At the same time, questionnaires were filled out and urine samples of the pregnant women were tested to substantiate the effect from exposure to tobacco smoke and/or from volatile organic compounds resulting from smoking. From the pool of mothers participating in the LINA-study, 315 mothers (6.6 percent of whom were smokers) and 441 children were consulted in these investigations.
The focus was on miR-223 and miR-155, because their role in regulating T cells had already been proven. “What we are now interested in finding out”, explains Dr. Gunda Herberth , “is whether or not these microRNAs link exposure to smoke, regulatory T cells and the risk of developing allergies.”
By measuring the concentration of these microRNAs as well as the number of regulatory T cells in maternal and cord blood it could be shown that a high exposure to inhaled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) associated with tobacco smoke coincides with high values for miR-223. At the same time it was also found that increased values for maternal and umbilical cord blood miR-223 correlate with low regulatory T-cell numbers. Finally, it could be shown that low regulatory T-cell numbers in umbilical cord blood was an indication that children exposed to tobacco smoke were more likely to develop an allergy before the age of three compared to those children with normal values for miR-223 and Treg cells. Furthermore, the probability of developing eczema was almost twice as high for these children.
“After already being able to demonstrate the influence of prenatal smoking on regulatory T-cell numbers in cord blood from our LINA study, the current epidemiological investigation delves even deeper into molecular processes”, Dr. Gunda Herberth and Dr. Irina Lehmann resume. “Now”, the immunologists from Leipzig explicate, “we will know more about the molecular processes that trigger off stressors from smoke during pregnancy.” Thus, for the first time the association between prenatal environmental stressors and the regulation of microRNA is described. In this respect, the current Helmholtz study opens the door to further research on the role of microRNA in terms of how the human immune system reacts to environmental stressors.