SOME smokers with lung cancer continue smoking, figuring why the hell not. Well, here’s why not: it can stop chemotherapy from working. Nor are patches the answer, as it turns out it is nicotine itself that has 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.
They added a small dose of nicotine, equivalent to the amount found in an average smoker’s bloodstream, to lung cancer cells cultured in the lab, and then treated them with…
