Cancer Center

TTURC

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  TTURC
  University of Minnesota
  2701 University Ave. SE
  Suite 201
  Minneapolis, Minnesota 55414
  email: klongley@umn.edu


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Selected Research Highlights


To date, from our most recent studies and analyses of our past studies, we are beginning to formulate these conclusions:
  1. Smoking reduction may not be a viable method to reduce harm because of the significant compensatory smoking behavior that occurs with decreasing number of cigarettes. For more information, see Hecht et al., 2004 Hatsukami et al., in submission.

  2. Cigarette education does not appear to result in significantly reduced tobacco exposure or a marked decrease in disease risk. For example, in a study conducted with smokers with cardiovascular disease, smokers who were assigned to the cigarette reduction arm did no better or worse than those randomized to the usual care cessation arm. Furthermore, reduction in smoking did not result in signifiicant reductions in health outcomes; For more information, see Joseph et al., in submission; Hatsukami et al., 2005a.

  3. Researchers have observed significant dose-related reductions in nicotine self-administration with increasing doses of nicotine replacement in animals and in humans. However, even with high doses, individual differences in responses are evident. For more information, see LeSage et al., 2003 and Hatsukami et al., in preparation.

  4. TTURC researchers are currently developing animal models for compensatory nicotine self-administration (NSA) caused by reduced nicotine availability. The results from these studies demonstrate that rats compensate for reduced availability for nicotine by increasing NSA. A significant predictor of the extent of compensatory self-administration behavior is nicotine pharmacokinetics, that is, the slower the clearance of nicotine, the less compensatory NSA. Parallel results were observed in humans. In human studies, those who had slower metabolism of nicotine showed less compensatory smoking. These results illustrate two points:

        (a) animal models can adequately reflect human behavior and (b) phenotyping individuals according to their rate of nicotine metabolism may determine who can benefit from reduced smoking, or more importnatly, who will not be able to benefit. For more information, please see Le Sage et al., SRNT, 2006, and Mooney et al., SRNT, 2006.

  5. Products that are combustible are not likely to lead to significant reductions in disease risk, however, non-combustilbe [link to term in glossary], low-nitrosamine [link to term in glossary] oral tobacco products are the most promising for harm reduction. The levels of tobacco specific nitrosamines (TSNAs) across oral products vary, with none in medicinal nicotine products, minimal levels in products such as the tobacco lozenge, Ariva (0.19 pg/g), higher levels in Swedish snus (3.1 to 3.7 pg/g) and the highest levels in the most popular brands sold in the United States (at 4.8 to 7.5 pg/g). When these products were examined in humans, similar levels of total NNAL [link to term in glossary], which is an assessment of the uptake of a tobacco specific nitrosamine, NNK [link to term in glossary], were observed. For more information, see Stepanov et al., in press, and Hatsukami et al., 2004.

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