MyHealthNewsDaily

Street drugs known as synthetic marijuana — also known as K2 and Spice — were linked to 11,406 visits to U.S. emergency rooms in 2010, according to a new government report.

Of these visits, 75 percent involved people between ages 12 and 29, with males accounting for 78 percent of the visits of that age group. In the majority of cases, the patients had used no other substances.

About 3,800 of the ER visits involved teens between ages 12 and 17, and a recent national survey of high school seniors showed that 11 percent reported using synthetic marijuana in 2011. These findings are "cause for concern," the report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) said.

"Parents, teachers, coaches and other concerned adults can make a huge impact by talking to young people, especially older adolescents and young adults, about the potential risks associated with using synthetic marijuana," SAMHSA administrator Pamela S. Hyde said in a statement.

There is no age restriction on purchasing the drugs, and their popularity among young people has grown, according to the report.

The drugs are designed to act on the body in a way similar to marijuana, and have been linked with a number of side effects, including vomiting, rapid heart rate, increased blood pressure, seizures, hallucinations and paranoid behavior.

"As synthetic cannabinoids have become more available, the number of ER visits involving synthetic cannabinoids has increased," according to the report.

In July, the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act enacted a comprehensive, national ban against the sale of the drugs. But the products are difficult to regulate and may be available online, the report noted.

The report is based on data gathered from the Drug Abuse Warning Network, a public health surveillance system that monitors drug-related ER visits in the U.S.

More from MyHealthNewsDaily:  

• The Old Drug Talk: 7 New Tips for Today's Parents
• Why Synthetic Marijuana Is More Dangerous Than the Real Thing
• 3 New Dangerous Drug Habits in Teens

LONDON — British health authorities warned heroin users on Monday that the drug may be contaminated with anthrax after a second addict died of the infection in Blackpool, northwest England, within four weeks.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said it presumed the source was contaminated heroin and that it was not clear whether the British cases were directly linked to eight other cases in Europe since early June.

"This could be a source of infection if injected, smoked or snorted ... there is no safe route for consuming heroin or other drugs that may be contaminated with anthrax spores," the HPA said.

Anthrax is a fairly common bacterium whose spores can be used as a biological weapon. Humans are rarely infected, but if the spores are inhaled, the disease can take hold quickly and by the time symptoms show, it can be too late for successful treatment with antibiotics.

The Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) say heroin users in Europe are still at risk of exposure to the infection.

Four of the ten European cases have been in Britain, three in Germany, two in Denmark and one in France.

"We urge all heroin users to seek urgent medical advice if they experience signs of infection such as redness or excessive swelling at or near an injection site, or ... high temperature, chills, severe headaches or breathing difficulties," HPA expert Fortune Ncube said in a statement.

An outbreak of anthrax infections in 2009/2010 in Europe was also traced to contaminated heroin, but before then, only one case had been reported - in Norway in 2000.

The infection is not transmitted directly from one person to another. It can come in several forms, including skin anthrax, lung anthrax - which has a 75 percent death rate - and gastrointestinal forms, all potentially deadly. 

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Nicotine patches do not help pregnant women quit smoking, a new study says.

Pregnant women in the study who used nicotine patches were just as likely to continue smoking until their delivery date as women who used a placebo, the researchers said.

"Clearly, standard dose nicotine patches do not work in pregnancy as well as they do in the general smoking population," study researcher Tim Coleman, of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.The new study is the largest of its kind to address this question.

The findings support the current guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that advise pregnant women against using nicotine patches because they have not been shown to help with quitting, said Dan Jacobsen, a nurse-practitioner at the Center for Tobacco Control, part of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in Great Neck, N.Y.

Instead, pregnant women who smoke should use other strategies to quit smoking, Jacobsen said, including stress management. Jacobsen's center has incorporated social media into smoking cessation therapies, using text messages to encourage and support pregnant women as they try to quit.

Smoking during pregnancy can lead to a number of health complications for the baby, including miscarriage, premature birth, low birth weight and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

 The study involved 1,050 women who were 12 to 24 weeks pregnant and smoked five or more cigarettes per day. Half of the women were randomly assigned to receive a nicotine patch for eight weeks, and half received a placebo patch.

After one month, the patch seemed somewhat effective: 21.3 percent of women in the nicotine patch group had refrained from smoking, compared with 11.7 percent of placebo group.

But this effect did not last. By delivery, 9.4 percent of women in the nicotine group had quit smoking, compared with 7.6 percent of the placebo group, a difference small enough that it could have been due to chance.

Very few participants actually kept up with their treatment. Just 7.2 percent of women in the nicotine group and 2.8 percent of women in the placebo group continued wearing their patchesfor more than one month.

The number of stillbirths, miscarriages and babies of low birth weight were similar in both groups, the researchers said.

Some women metabolize nicotine 60 to 120 times faster during pregnancy, which may reduce nicotine levels in their bodies and increase withdrawal symptoms. A higher nicotine dose may be needed for the drug to be effective in pregnant women, the researchers said.

Women included in the study had characteristics of people who are highly addicted to cigarettes, Jacobsen said. For instance, the majority smoked their first cigarettes within 15 minutes of waking. (The shorter the time between waking and the first cigarette, the more addicted the person is, Jacobsen said.) It's not clear whether less addicted individuals would respond better to the therapy, Jacobsen said.

Because so few women in the study adhered to the nicotine patch therapy, more research is needed to confirm it does not cause health problems in infants, the researchers said.

The study is published in the March 1 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

More from Vitals:

• Many keep smoking after cancer diagnosis
• 1 in 10 smokers hides it from the doctor

It took asthma, COPD, emphysema and finally, lung cancer to get Toni Manes, a retired cosmetologist, to try to quit smoking.

Unfortunately, the 58-year-old was so hooked, she couldn't kick the habit even after part of her left lung was removed.

"I remember my surgeon told me 'If you ever smoke again, your husband should break your fingers,'" says the Philadelphia resident, who was diagnosed and had surgery in 2010. "And I was like, 'Okay, I'm not going to smoke again.'  But then I came home from surgery, recuperated for a few weeks and started up again. I couldn't help myself."

According to a new study in the American Cancer Society journal CANCER, Manes is just one of many patients who've found themselves smoking after diagnosis.

Researchers looked at 2,456 lung cancer patients and 3,063 colorectal patients and discovered that at time of diagnosis, 38 percent of the lung cancer patients and 15 percent of the colorectal patients were smokers.

Courtesy of Toni Manes

Lung cancer patient Toni Manes continued to smoke after her diagnosis.

Five months later, despite a cancer diagnosis, 14 percent of the lung cancer patients were still lighting up (ditto for 9 percent of the colorectal patients).

'Why stop now?'
"People think it's a no-brainer and are surprised that cancer patients continue to smoke after they're diagnosed," says Elyse R. Park, a clinical health psychologist and associate professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and lead researcher for the study. "But people still struggle to quit even after they're diagnosed. There are a lot of barriers to quitting, including a lot of stigma."

Park says many of the people who can't quit are "hard-core" smokers, i.e., they smoke a high number of cigarettes a day. Many, also, are surrounded by other smokers.

"These people are nicotine addicted, so it's tough for them," says Park. "They also have a lot of self-blame for causing the disease. There are feelings of fatalism. They think, 'Why stop now?' And a lot of people are very judgmental about lung cancer patients causing their own disease."

According to the Lung Cancer Foundation of America, 60 percent of new lung cancer diagnoses happen to non-smokers, 15 percent of whom have never smoked a day in their life (the rest are former smokers who quit 10, 20 or even 30 years prior to diagnosis). The American Lung Association estimates that active smoking is responsible for close to 90 percent of lung cancer cases; radon causes 10 percent, and occupational exposures to carcinogens account for approximately 9 to 15 percent.

Manes says following surgery, she went on to do three rounds of chemotherapy, followed by radiation. And even though she continued to smoke throughout, she worked with her oncologist at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital on ways to quit.

"We tried everything," she says. "Hypnosis, Chantix, patches, cessation groups, acupuncture, the gum, the lozenges -- and none of that stuff did anything for me. I was depressed and didn't want to face that I had cancer. I saw a death sentence for myself. What difference did it make if I smoked or not?"

Park says she hopes her study will pave the way for more smoking cessation programs and treatment options for patients who are smoking at the time of their diagnosis.

"One of the reasons it's hard to quit is that people think they have enough to worry about," she says. "But it's the best time to quit because it has the potential to improve their cancer treatment, from breathing easier and feeling less fatigue to reducing the chance of infection after surgery."

Parks says studies also show that quitting smoking can increase the efficacy of chemo and radiation and may even double the chances of survival for lung cancer patients.

"We're hoping to integrate evidence-based tobacco treatment into cancer care," she says. "So you don't just ask a patient, 'Do you smoke, yes or no?' But you try to get them to quit as part of their treatment. It's a tough time, but we're hoping to find ways to sit with patients and get them pharmacological and behavior counseling treatment."

The good news? There's some evidence Park's approach might just work.

"On October 31, 2011, I got a sinus cold again and with every puff, I was choking," says Manes. "So I put on a patch and humbled myself before God and begged him to help me. I needed some kind of inner strength. On the 31st of this month, it'll be three months that I've been smoke-free."