Smoking and lung cancer: reducing consumption is not enough, we need to stop smoking
,
For most smokers, the fact of
reducing cigarette consumption is reduced exposure to carcinogens than moderate
and transitory, warn the authors of a U.S. study published in the "Journal
of the National Cancer Institute."
Smoking being the cause of 90% of
lung cancers, U.S. researchers have tried to assess the impact of the reduction
in daily cigarette consumption on the risk of developing this disease.
With this in mind, Dr. Stephen Hecht
and colleagues from the center of research on smoking, which depends on the
Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, sought to
determine if this method of weaning was associated with a reduction exposure to
a carcinogenic molecule characteristic of lung cancer contained in cigarette
smoke, the NKK.
To do this, they measured the
presence of degradation products of this molecule in the urine of 151 smokers
enrolled in a program to reduce their cigarette consumption.
Developed over a period of six
months, weaning protocol expected a quarter of the reduction in cigarette
consumption during the first two weeks, then half for the next two weeks.
Participants were then between the fourth and sixth week, down three quarters
consumption and maintain this goal until the 26th week.
Also the amount of by-products of
NKK, the researchers also determined at each sampling carried out within the
six months of withdrawal, the rate of anatabine. Thus, the presence of the
other compound of cigarette smoke allowed them to check whether the
participants actually reduced their consumption.
Despite the possibility of using
nicotine replacement therapy, only 92 of the 151 participants were able to
reduce their consumption. And if significant reductions in serum metabolites
NKK were observed parallel to the gradual withdrawal, they proved generally
modest and often transient.
Thus, for participants who managed
to reduce by 90% the consumption of cigarettes over a period of twelve weeks
(from 24.7 to 2.6 per day on average), the average rate of metabolites NKK did
not even not halved (46%), the authors found.
According to them, smokers reduce
their cigarette consumption would change their smoking to successfully maintain
their daily dose of nicotine. Inhaling more deeply and smoke more deeply, so
they would keep the amount of toxic substances absorbed despite the decrease in
the number of daily cigarettes.
For most smokers, the act of simply
reduce the daily consumption would be sufficient to reduce the risk of
developing lung cancer and a final withdrawal would therefore be a more
effective option to prevent the disease.
Author: Mohammad
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