Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller and 39 other attorneys general are calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to place restrictions on the sale of electronic cigarettes.

In a bipartisan letter, the attorneys general urged the FDA to take all available measures to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products under the Tobacco Control Act. E-cigarettes are battery operated products that heat liquid nicotine, derived from tobacco plants, into a vapor that is inhaled by the user.

“Some smokers see e-cigarettes as a way to wean themselves off of other tobacco products, but the health effects of these popular alternatives have not been adequately studied and the ingredients are not regulated,” Zoeller said. “Nicotine is highly addictive and, if e-cigarettes are left unregulated, our state’s youth may use them as a gateway to smoking.”

State Attorneys General have fought for years to protect people from the dangers of tobacco products. In 1998, the attorneys general of 52 states and territories signed a landmark agreement with the four largest tobacco companies in the United States to recover billions of dollars in costs associated with smoking-related illnesses, and restrict cigarette advertising to prevent youth smoking.

Zoeller said unlike traditional tobacco products, there are no federal age restrictions that would prevent children from obtaining e-cigarettes. Noting the growing use of e-cigarettes, and the growing prevalence of advertising, the letter highlights the need to protect youth from becoming addicted to nicotine through these new products.

A survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that from 2011 to 2012, the percentages of youth who have tried or currently use e-cigarettes both roughly doubled. The survey estimates that nearly 1.8 million middle and high school students have tried e-cigarettes in 2012.

According to the U.S. Surgeon General, nicotine is highly addictive and has immediate bio-chemical effects on the brain and body at any dosage, and is toxic in high doses.

E-cigarette manufacturers are using marketing tactics similar to those big tobacco used in the last 50 to 100 years to attract new smokers. Celebrity endorsements, television advertising, cartoons, fruit flavors, attractive packaging and cheap prices all serve to encourage youth consumption of these dangerous products.

Additionally, some marketing claims that these products do not contain the same level of toxins and carcinogens found in traditional cigarettes, cigars, and other tobacco products. These claims imply that e-cigarettes are a safe alternative to smoking, when in fact nicotine is highly addictive, the health effects of e-cigarettes have not been adequately studied, and the ingredients are not regulated and may still contain carcinogens.

Benji is an 11-month-old beagle mix puppy! He has been through a lot in his young life, so he is looking forward to someone with the patience and desire to raise him to be the amazing dog we know he can be. He has lots of energy, but is a very well-behaved and friendly boy. His adoption fee is $100, which includes his microchip, vaccinations, and a bag of food. He is also neutered, so he can go home with you TODAY!

Amanda Bienhaus

Public Relations, Media, and Special Events

Vanderburgh Humane Society

(812) 426-2563 ext. 211

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Evansville Cancer Center/Vantage Oncology (ECC/VO), a Tri-State Radiation Oncology Center (TROC), and Deaconess Chancellor Center for Oncology were recently awarded a three-year term of accreditation in radiation oncology as the result of a recent review by the American College of Radiology (ACR). Radiation oncology (radiation therapy) is the careful use of high-energy radiation to treat cancer. A radiation oncologist may use radiation to cure cancer or to relieve a cancer patient’s pain.

The ACR is the nation’s oldest and most widely accepted radiation oncology accrediting body, with over 500 accredited sites, and 25 years of accreditation experience. The ACR seal of accreditation represents the highest level of quality and patient safety. It is awarded only to facilities meeting specific practice guidelines and technical standards developed by ACR after a peer-review evaluation by board-certified radiation oncologists and medical physicists who are experts in the field. Patient care and treatment, patient safety, personnel qualifications, adequacy of facility equipment, quality control procedures, and quality assurance programs are assessed. The findings are reported to the ACR Committee on Radiation Oncology Accreditation, which then provides the practice with a comprehensive report they can use for continuous practice improvement.

“ACR’s accreditation of Evansville Cancer Center/Vantage Oncology and Deaconess Chancellor Center for Oncology is a credit to our dedicated team of nurses, radiation therapists, dosimetrists, physicists and radiation oncologists who are committed to providing outstanding radiation therapy treatments to our cancer patients,” said Jon D. Frazier, M.D., radiation oncologist and medical director of ECC/VO. “We are extremely proud to have received this accreditation and will continue to hold ourselves to an extremely high standard so that our patients receive high quality cancer care.”

The ACR is a national professional organization serving more than 36,000 diagnostic/interventional radiologists, radiation oncologists, nuclear medicine physicians, and medical physicists with programs focusing on the practice of medical imaging and radiation oncology and the delivery of comprehensive health care services.

For more information about the Chancellor Center for Oncology, please visit www.deaconess.com and for more information on the Evansville Cancer Center/Vantage Oncology, please visit www.evansvilleradiationoncology.com.

Research casts doubt on practice of placing children with autism on a gluten-free diet, experts say

HealthDay News) — A large, new study finds no linkage between the digestive disorder celiac disease and autism.

One theory about autism is that it may start in the gut, because some children with the disorder also suffer from gastrointestinal problems. Many are put on strict gluten-free diets in the hopes that avoiding wheat proteins will improve their behavior.

“Studies have not really shown that this works, but it is a common belief,” said Dr. Daniel Coury, chief of developmental-behavioral pediatrics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

The new study, which was published online Sept. 25 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, offers the most definitive proof yet that many autistic kids don’t benefit from restrictive, wheat-free diets.

The study comes from Sweden, a country that keeps careful records on the health of its citizens. Sweden also has rates of celiac disease that are about twice as high as in the United States, said study author Dr. Joseph Murray, a celiac disease specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Researchers pulled the health records on almost 290,000 people who’d had intestinal biopsies. Intestinal biopsies are tests where doctors take a tissue sample of the small intestine and examine it under the microscope to look for signs of damage. Intestinal biopsies are considered to be the most reliable way to check for celiac disease.

Based on the biopsy results, about 27,000 of those people had full-blown celiac disease. More than 12,000 had signs of inflammation without celiac disease. And another 3,700 had blood tests that indicated that they were having an immune reaction to wheat proteins, as people with celiac disease do, but their biopsies showed no intestinal damage.

Researchers then compared the rates of autism diagnoses in those groups to autism rates among more than 213,000 others who had biopsies with normal test results. Individuals in the normal comparison group were carefully matched to be the same age and sex as those with suspicious tests. They also lived in the same part of the country and had their biopsies done the same year as the others.

The result: Researchers say they found no convincing evidence that autism and celiac disease are linked.

“If there was a connection between these two diseases — either hidden celiac disease causing autism or autism causing celiac disease, it should have shown up in the study of this size. So, I think that’s the big message,” said Murray. “This brings some finality to that debate.”

When researchers restricted their results to a smaller subset of children who were diagnosed with celiac disease before their autism was spotted, they found that a prior diagnosis of celiac disease boosted the odds that child would be diagnosed with autism down the road by roughly 40 percent.

“An increased risk doesn’t mean it causes it in everybody,” said Coury, who was not involved in the study. “I think that’s important to note.”

One finding from the study that can’t be easily explained involved children who had immune reactions to wheat proteins that were picked up by a blood test, but no signs of intestinal damage. In other words, their blood tests for celiac disease were positive, but their biopsies were not.

The study found that those children were about three times more likely to be diagnosed with autism later in life than children who had negative blood test results.

Coury said it could be an important clue to the biology behind autism.

“We don’t know what causes autism. So the question is, what’s going on there?” he said. “We do know there are some inflammatory markers or immune issues involved with autism and this might help explain some cases of autism.”

The study authors, however, said that the finding should be interpreted with caution.

It is possible, Murray said, that these children were just sick from an early age. Sick children are probably more likely to have blood tests ordered for them. And he noted that the blood tests for celiac disease are sometimes falsely positive, so that might have muddied the results.

Another explanation may be that children with autism simply have more allergies than those who don’t. Or they might have disease where the same underlying defect causes both an immune disturbance and behavioral problems, as Coury speculated.

“I don’t think our study was really addressing that,” Murray said.

Other experts agreed.

“This study shows that autism is not related to celiac disease,” said Dr. Peter Green, director of the celiac disease center at Columbia University Medical School.

“All these kids are on a gluten-free diet,” Green said, even though “there’s no evidence it’s a causal relationship.”

More information

For more on autism spectrum disorders, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.