Doctors Can Catch Teen Smoking Early

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A few simple questions in the pediatrician's office may spot teen smokers before they become addicted, results of a study suggest.

Although young people seem to take doctors' anti-smoking warnings seriously, there are no recommendations for pediatricians on how to catch teen smoking, researchers report in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Now investigators have found that a short questionnaire coupled with a urine test can not only identify smokers, but also pinpoint which kids are regular smokers and which ones are still just experimenting.

This method could allow doctors to catch teen smoking before it becomes a habit, according to Dr. Irwin Benuck and his colleagues at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, Illinois.

In the study, 124 high school students completed a questionnaire on smoking and had their urine tested for cotinine, a marker of smoking that helps differentiate between heavy and light users. Benuck's team found that while two thirds of the teens did not smoke, 10% were regular smokers, and 23% experimented with cigarettes. The questionnaire alone identified 92% of regular smokers, the report indicates.

Besides weeding out smokers and experimenters, the questionnaire also uncovered some details of the teens' smoking. For example, both smokers and experimenters started when they were 12 or 13, on average. Most pointed to their smoking friends as one reason they started. And 85% of regular smokers had a family member who smoked, compared with 39% of experimenters and 27% of non-smokers.

According to Benuck's team, pediatricians can make a dent in teen smoking by catching experimenters before they become addicted.

``Though the primary causes of smoking remain social, and nicotine addiction is difficult to treat,'' the authors write, ''physicians remain the most trusted carriers of the antismoking message.''

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 2001;155:32-35.

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