Head and neck cancer is reportedly the sixth most common cancer across the globe, and most commonly it manifests as squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), a type of cancer that arises in the outer layer of the skin and mucous membranes of the mouth, nose and throat.
Switching from smoking to vaping would decrease users’ cancer risk by about 99%.
A study by researchers from Thomas Jefferson University researchers published online in the journal Molecular Cancer Research, aimed to determine the the effects of cigarette smoke on tumor progression. The study indicated that cigarette smoke reprograms the cells that surround cancer cells in a way which increases the aggressiveness of HNSCC.
“Cigarette smoke changes the metabolism of cells in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas, making the tumors more efficient as an ecosystem to promote cancer growth,” says Ubaldo Martinez-Outschoorn, MD, lead study author and associate professor in the Department of Medical Oncology and a researcher at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health.
How about vaping?
A 2017 study titled, “Comparing the cancer potencies of emissions from vapourised nicotine products including e-cigarettes with those of tobacco smoke”, carried out by Dr William E Stephens from the University of St Andrews in the UK, had looked into the risks from inhaling vapor in comparison to those from inhaling smoke.
In line with countless other studies indicating similar results, the researchers had found that switching from smoking to vaping would decrease users’ cancer risk by about 99%. “The aerosols form a spectrum of cancer potencies spanning five orders of magnitude from uncontaminated air to tobacco smoke. E-cigarette emissions span most of this range with the preponderance of products having potencies <1% of tobacco smoke and falling within two orders of magnitude of a medicinal nicotine inhaler,” read the study abstract.
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