DNA News - Beaverton

Beaverton, Oregon. - Smoking could speed up the growth of lung cancers as well as causing them in the first place, researchers have claimed. It is known that smoking and passive smoking cause nine out of 10 lung cancers because carcinogens in the smoke trigger pre-cancerous mutations in DNA. But researchers from the US suggest nicotine could make lung cancers more aggressive by stimulating tumour cells to grow and divide.

But the researchers from the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton suggest acetylcholine may also act as a growth factor outside the nervous system.