ORCID Identifiers

0000-0003-2014-9032

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

PLoS ONE

Publication Date

5-1-2018

Abstract

© 2018 Al-Houqani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Introduction Self-reported tobacco use in the United Arab Emirates is among the highest in the region. Use of tobacco products other than cigarettes is widespread, but little is known about specific behavior use patterns. There have been no studies that have biochemically verified smoking status. Methods The UAE Healthy Future Study (UAEHFS) seeks to understand the causes of non-communicable diseases through a 20,000-person cohort study. During the study pilot, 517 Emirati nationals were recruited to complete a questionnaire, provide clinical measurements and biological samples. Complete smoking data were available for 428 participants. Validation of smoking status via cotinine testing was conducted based on complete questionnaire data and matching urine samples for 399 participants, using a cut-off of 200ng/ml to indicate active smoking status. Results Self-reported tobacco use was 36% among men and 3% among women in the sample. However, biochemical verification of smoking status revealed that 42% men and 9% of women were positive for cotinine indicating possible recent tobacco use. Dual and poly-use of tobacco products was fairly common with 32% and 6% of the sample reporting respectively. Conclusions This is the first study in the region to biochemically verify tobacco use self-report data. Tobacco use in this study population was found to be higher than previously thought, especially among women. Misclassification of smoking status was more common than expected. Poly-tobacco use was also very common. Additional studies are needed to understand tobacco use behaviors and the extent to which people may be exposed to passive tobacco smoke. Implications This study is the first in the region to biochemically verify self-reported smoking status.

ISSN

1932-6203

Publisher

Public Library of Science

Volume

13

Issue

5

First Page

e0198119

Disciplines

Life Sciences

Keywords

cotinine, adult, Article, biochemical analysis, clinical assessment, cohort analysis, Emirati, female, hookah, human, male, non communicable disease, passive smoking, pilot study, population distribution, self report, sex ratio, smoking, tobacco dependence, tobacco use, United Arab Emirates, urinalysis, urine sampling, epidemiology, health survey, tobacco use, United Arab Emirates, Adult, Female, Health Surveys, Humans, Male, Pilot Projects, Self Report, Tobacco Use, United Arab Emirates

Scopus ID

85047828619

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Gold: This publication is openly available in an open access journal/series

Included in

Life Sciences Commons

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