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North Carolina oncologists report that former or current cigarette smokers are significantly more likely to suffer breast cancer lung metastases compared with non-smokers.  To find out why, they went into the lab and found, in a mouse model, that nicotine is the culprit.

In their human study group of 1077 breast cancer patients, the group of tobacco smokers had a 13% higher incidence of metastases.  To study the role of nicotine, they injected nicotine into mice previously given a mouse breast cancer.  

The result: the nicotine injections increased the animals’ metastatic burden 100-fold.  The reason: nicotine triggers pro-tumor white cell activity that allows tumor cells to colonize distant tissues.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20733-9

#breastcancer #metastasis #nicotine