It was also interesting to note that, unlike the White and African American menthol users who had lower rates of continuous abstinence than their non-menthol using counterparts, Latina menthol users had nonsignificantly higher rates of continuous abstinence than Latina non-menthol users. This pattern is in need of replication but suggests http://www.selleckchem.com/products/CHIR-258.html that future studies should examine racial/ethnic interactions or conduct racial/ethnic subgroup analyses when examining the effects of prepartum menthol use on postpartum relapse. Limitations of this study include the uneven distribution of menthol and non-menthol smokers among the African American and White participants. Future studies in this area might include equal proportions of menthol and non-menthol users within each racial/ethnic group.

An additional limitation is that participants were treatment seeking and self-referred. Therefore, results may not generalize to nontreatment seeking pregnant/postpartum women or to pregnant/postpartum women who do not volunteer for relapse prevention studies. In this study, smokers had quit by the time of enrollment (30th to 33rd week of pregnancy). Therefore, results may not generalize to women who quit later in their pregnancies or postpartum. Participants were residents of the Houston, TX, metropolitan area and results may not generalize to pregnant/postpartum women from other locations, including rural areas. Finally, although analyses adjusted for several potential confounders, the degree to which the presence of unknown and unmeasured confounders might have influenced these results is unknown.

In conclusion, to our knowledge, this was the first study examining the effects of prepartum menthol use on postpartum smoking relapse. Although menthol use did not predict relapse among the racially/ethnically diverse sample of women as a whole, significant effects were found among the subgroup of White women. Results add to the literature that will inform the future legislative actions stemming from Act HR 1256 and are in need of future replication. Funding This work was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute (R01CA89350 to D.W.W.), the Center for Tobacco Products of the Food and Drug Administration (to L.R.R.), and the National Institutes of Health through MD Anderson’s Cancer Center Support Grant (“type”:”entrez-nucleotide”,”attrs”:”text”:”CA016672″,”term_id”:”24294016″,”term_text”:”CA016672″CA016672).

Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Food and Drug Administration or any of the other project supporters. Declaration Drug_discovery of Interests Authors would like to report that P. M. Cinciripini has served on the scientific advisory board of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and has conducted educational talks sponsored by Pfizer on smoking cessation for physicians within the last 3 years.