Stroke Risk May be Elevated Among Smokers of Mentholated Cigarettes

Newsatjama.jama.com: Women’s Health — Bridget M. Kuehn @ 3:06 pm, April 9, 2012.

Smoking mentholated cigarettes may increase stroke risk in certain individuals, a study published today in theArchives of Internal Medicine suggests. Many questions remain about the health effects of smoking mentholated vs nonmentholated cigarettes. Some evidence suggests that smoking mentholated cigarettes increases the likelihood of developing a smoking habit. Other data suggest that smokers of mentholated cigarettes may actually have a lower risk of lung cancer than smokers of nonmentholated cigarettes. But little information exists on noncancer health outcomes, so Nicholas T. Vozoris, MD, a clinical associate at St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, and his colleagues examined data on about 5000 smokers from the 2001-2008 US National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys to determine if cardiac health problems differed between smokers of mentholated versus nonmentholated cigarettes. Read More