Stop Smoking Way

Pregnant women who stop smoking before the 15th week have rates of preterm birth and small-for-dates babies comparable to those of non-smoking women, new research indicates.

The findings show that “these severe adverse effects of smoking may be reversible if smoking is stopped early in pregnancy,” Dr. Lesley M. E. McCowan, from the University of Adelaide, Australia, and colleagues comment in the British Medical Journal.

The results come from an analysis of data for 2500 women who were having their first baby. At 15 weeks’ gestation, the women were classified as non-smokers, stopped smokers, or current smokers.

A Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study has found that the parents and caregivers of children with asthma often underestimate and underreport how much they smoke at home and around their children, giving pediatricians a skewed idea about their patients’ exposure to secondhand smoke.

Because self-reporting inaccurately gauges exposure, pediatricians should use more reliable measures such as obtaining urine samples from children to check for secondhand smoke inhalation, researchers say.

In a study of 81 children with persistent asthma who lived with a smoker, researchers found wide discrepancies between objective tests and parental reports. In addition, nearly one-third of parents and caregivers reported smoking in the car in the child’s presence, a red flag that exposure to secondhand smoke occurs outside the home.

You know smoking sets a bad example for the kids and second-hand smoke is harmful. As if that wasn’t warning enough, a strongly worded Montreal study shows someone else’s smoke can lead to nicotine addiction in children.

“Increased exposure to second-hand smoke, both in cars and homes, was associated with an increased likelihood of children reporting nicotine dependence symptoms — even though these kids had never put a cigarette in their mouths,” said epidemiologist Jennifer O’Loughlin, senior author of the study and a professor at the Universite de Montreal.