According to an article in New Scientist, smokers with lung cancer who continue smoking may prevent the chemotherapy treament from working. Nor are patches the answer, as it turns out it is nicotine that causes the effect.

Srikumar Chellappan and colleagues at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa, Florida, looked at how nicotine affected the performance of three anti-cancer drugs – gemcitabine, cisplatin and Taxol.

Nicotine protected the cancer cells by activating two genes called XIAP and survivin, which prevent the cell suicide normally induced by the drugs (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0509313103).

“Patients who continue to smoke have worse survival profiles than those who quit before treatment,” says Chellappan. “Of course they have to be treated, but they should be undergoing smoking cessation programmes.”

(Issue 2546 of New Scientist magazine, 08 April 2006, page 20)

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