Among smokers, people who prefer mentholated cigarettes tend to have more strokes than non-menthol smokers - and this seems to be especially true for women and non-African Americans, according to a North American study.
The author of the study said that while no cigarettes are good for the health, the findings - published in the Archives of Internal Medicine - suggest people should especially stay away from mentholated varieties.
"They're all bad, but having said that, from a harm-reduction perspective this study does lend to the view of avoiding - at a minimum - mentholated types," said Nicholas Vozoris, a clinical associate at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.
For the study, Vozoris used information taken from US health and lifestyle surveys that included 5,028 adult smokers. Overall, about 26 percent of those participants said they usually smoked mentholated cigarettes, and the rest smoked non-mentholated ones.