I read Mirahmadizadeh and Nakhaee’s paper [1] on the prevalence of smoking qalyân/narghile (the local water pipe) among pregnant women in Southern Iran with great interest. While I share their concern over the prevalence, they should have cited and discussed a relevant study by Mansour Sulaiman from Saudi Arabia [2] , noting that although prenatal exposure to shisha smoke in animals lowered the...

We thank Dr. Farsalinos and Dr. Baeyens for their comments in their letter to the editor on our publication: “Potential harmful health effects of inhaling nicotine-free shisha-pen vapor: a chemical risk assessment of the main components propylene glycol and glycerol” [1]. Apparently some issues discussed in our publication were not sufficiently clear and we thank the editor of Tobacco Induced D...

Background: In the last 25 years, rates of waterpipe tobacco smoking have sharply increased in the United States and other Western countries. At the same time, social media platforms such as Instagram have become a popular way to portray content related to waterpipe smoking. Thus, public health researchers have become interested in the potential relationship between the portrayal of waterpipe s...

With this letter we express our concerns about the applicability of the proposed Margin of Exposure analysis as a method of risk assessment for propylene glycol and glycerol exposure from a shisha-pen type electronic cigarette. The studies used to determine the Margin of Exposure were evaluating the effects in humans or animals of continuous exposure to these chemicals in every single breath, w...

Objective: To determine the histological effects of Shisha smoke on submucosal glands in trachea of experimental animals. Material & Methods: This analytical experimental randomized control trial was carried out in the department of anatomy, Islamic International Medical College, Rawalpindi, in collaboration with National Institute of Health (NIH), in the year 2013. Twenty-five adult male BALB/...