Brief Exposure To Second-Hand Smoke Bad For Health According To New Study

Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Article Date: 08 May 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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Nymox Pharmaceutical Corporation (NASDAQ: NYMX) offers TobacAlert™ Urine, an easy-to-use test for second-hand smoke exposure that requires no special equipment or training and can be used for at home or at the workplace. A new study has shown that even a brief exposure to second-hand smoke may hurt human blood vessels. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco found that healthy nonsmokers exposed to 30 minutes of second-hand smoke showed signs of blood vessel injury and impaired repair responses that persisted up to 24 hours after exposure, in a report published in the most recent issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (J Am Coll Cardiol. May 6, 2008; 51:1760-71).

"Second-hand smoke is insidious and exposure to second-hand smoke has serious short term and long term health consequences for children and adults alike," said Brian Doyle, Nymox's Senior Manager for Worldwide Sales and Marketing. "Parents who smoke may not realize the extent to which their habit is harming their children, even if their child's exposure to second-hand smoke at home or in the car is relatively brief. Our TobacAlert™ Urine product gives concerned individuals a way of assessing the level of tobacco product use or exposure within a matter of minutes."

Second-hand smoke poses a serious and pervasive health risk to children and adults according to the comprehensive 2006 report from the U.S. Surgeon General, The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke. The report highlighted how vulnerable children in particular are to second-hand smoke. Children exposed to secondhand smoke are at an increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), acute respiratory infections, ear problems, worsening of allergies and more severe asthma. The report also links second-hand smoke to coronary heart disease and lung cancer in adults and notes that even a brief exposure to second-hand smoke has immediate adverse effects on a person's cardiovascular system.

TobacAlert™ can be used with either urine or saliva samples to provide an accurate visual read-out on a person's tobacco use or exposure within minutes by measuring levels of cotinine, a by-product of the break-down of nicotine in the human body that the Surgeon General's Report described as "the biomarker of choice for assessing secondhand smoke exposure."

More information is available at http://www.tobacalert.com.

More information about Nymox is available at http://www.nymox.com.

This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements" as defined in the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and the actual results and future events could differ materially from management's current expectations. The conduct of clinical trials and the development of drug and diagnostic products involve substantial risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially from expectations. Promising early results do not ensure that later stage or larger scale clinical trials will be successful or will proceed as expected. Such factors are detailed from time to time in Nymox's filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory authorities.

http://www.nymox.com