Mentholated cigarettes 'no more harmful than regular ones'

A new study has shown that smokers of mentholated cigarettes are no more likely to develop lung cancer than other smokers.

In fact, contrary to a popular hypothesis, menthol smokers in this study had a somewhat lower risk of developing and dying from lung cancer than non-menthol smokers.

Lung cancer rates are higher among blacks than whites, and use of mentholated cigarettes, also higher among blacks, has been suggested as a possible explanation.

To explore these issues, William J Blot, of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and the International Epidemiology Institute, Rockville, and colleagues conducted a prospective study among 85,806 people enrolled in the Southern Community Cohort Study, an ongoing multiracial study in 12 southern states. Within this cohort, they identified 440 lung cancer patients and compared them with 2,213 matched controls (other people in the study with the same demographics, such as race, age, and sex, but without lung cancer).

They found that menthol cigarettes were associated with a lower lung cancer incidence and fewer lung cancer deaths than regular cigarettes. For instance among people smoking 20 or more cigarettes a day, menthol smokers were about 12 times more likely to have lung cancer than never-smokers while non-menthol smokers were about 21 times more likely to have the disease. The differences were statistically significant.

The authors conclude that mentholated cigarettes are no more, and perhaps less, harmful than non-mentholated cigarettes.

The study has been published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.