Depressed Smokers Less Likely to Quit Successfully

Smokers trying kick the addiction are less likely to be successful if they're depressed, says a new study. Researchers surveyed callers to the California Smokers' Helpline and found that 24 percent had major depression and 17 percent had mild depression. More than half of the smokers had made an attempt to quit smoking after calling the hotline. After two months, the rate of success of smokers with major depression was far lower than that of smokers who were mildly depressed or not depressed.

Of those who tried to stop smoking, around one in five with major depression had been able to quit and stay smoke-free, compared to nearly one in three people in the other two groups. The findings appear online and in the January 2011 print issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. It was already known that mild depression reduces smokers' chances of quitting. This study suggests that major depression has an even greater impact. But most smoking hotlines also known as quitlines do not evaluate smokers for depression, the researchers noted.

More than 400,000 smokers in the United States call smoking quitlines each year. Based on their findings, the study authors estimated that up to 100,000 depressed smokers are not receiving the targeted treatment they require. "Assessing for depression can predict if a smoker will quit successfully, but the assessment would be more valuable if it were linked to services" that address both smoking and depression, lead author Kiandra Hebert, of the University of California at San Diego, said in a Center for Advancing Health news release.

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Low-Dose Aspirin May Reduce Colon Cancer Risk

Taking low-dose aspirin daily may reduce the risk of colorectal cancer, new research finds. Prior research has shown higher doses of aspirin reduces the risk of colon cancer. But this study is among the first to show that lower doses which have less risk of side effects such as gastrointestinal bleeding may also be effective, said Eric Jacobs, strategic director of pharmacoepidemiology for the American Cancer Society. For this study, researchers in Scotland asked 2,279 people with colorectal cancer and 2,907 people without colorectal cancer to answer questions about diet and lifestyle choices could affect cancer risk. Participants were asked how often they took low-dose aspirin, as well as non-aspirin NSAIDs such as naproxen and ibuprofen in the year prior to their cancer diagnosis or recruitment in the study.

About 18.1 percent of those without cancer reported taking aspirin during that time, compared to 15.5 percent of those who had colorectal cancer. Participants who reported taking low-dose aspirin regularly for a year or more were about 22 percent less likely to have colorectal cancer. The reduction was clinically significant among those who reported taking low-dose aspirin for more than five years, according to the study: They were 30 percent less likely to develop cancer than their peers who didn't take the painkillers. Although the greatest risk reduction occurred in those consuming more than 525 milligrams of aspirin a week, the protective effect was present even for the lowest daily dose.

"The new case-control study from Scotland is one of the largest to date to have specifically examined low dose aspirin, and provides some evidence that using low-dose aspirin for five or more years may also reduce colorectal cancer risk," said Jacobs, who was not involved in the research. "However, previous studies of low-dose aspirin and colorectal cancer have had mixed results, and results of this study need to be confirmed." The study also found that taking any NSAID regularly was associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer, compared to those who didn't use the painkillers. The subjects and controls had been matched for age, gender and locale as well as smoking, alcohol and fiber intake, and the findings held true even after results were adjusted for weight, body-mass index and other factors, according to the study, which was published in the current issue of the journal Gut.

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Diabetes Drug Metformin Linked to Lower Lung Cancer Rate in Mice

A drug widely used to treat high blood sugar in type 2 diabetics may hold some promise in the prevention of tobacco-induced lung cancer, according to extremely preliminary findings in a mouse study. In the September issue of Cancer Prevention Research, researchers report that metformin was associated with a substantial reduction (up to 73 percent) in the number of tumors mice developed when they were given a common carcinogen found in tobacco. Despite the fact that there have been no randomized controlled trials on whether metformin really can prevent cancer, researchers expressed excitement both over this animal study and previous epidemiological evidence pointing to this possibility.

Metformin has been in use for more than two decades and is currently prescribed to 40 million Americans. "This is a very safe agent and has been around for a while," said Cancer Prevention Research editor-in-chief Dr. Scott Lippman, chair of thoracic head and neck medical oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, at a Wednesday news conference. "The evidence in diabetic humans is very convincing and very strong," added Dr. Phillip Dennis, a senior investigator with the U.S. National Cancer Institute and senior author on the lung cancer paper. "Almost every epidemiological study I can think of found a decreased cancer incidence in diabetics taking metformin. The reduction is real and ranges from 30 to 70 percent."

The researchers thought metformin's possible cancer-lowering properties suggested the need for clinical trials to investigate whether the drug might help prevent tumors in smokers at high risk of developing cancer. Others believed that the finding might influence the choice of drugs in people with diabetes. "All other things being equal, many diabetics face a choice of oral agents, and early evidence that metformin may have an effect on the oncology side may increasingly play a role in decision-making," said Dr. Michael Pollack, professor of medicine and oncology at McGill University in Montreal. "We can't ignore this, but we can't say we have FDA approval for metformin for cancer indications."

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