Current tobacco and water-pipe smoking enhance human cancer invasion and metastasis

摘要

We want to congratulate the authors of the article "Smoking at diagnosis and survival in cancer patients"1 for their input in cancer research on this very important topic. This analysis is based on 5,185 cancer patients in the USA, including 13 sites of cancer disease containing at least 100 patients diagnosed after a median follow-up of 12 years. They reported that current tobacco smoking increased overall mortality (OM) and disease-specific mortality (DSM) risk when compared with former or never smoking patients, using Cox proportional hazards analysis. More specifically, they revealed that current smoking increased mortality risks in lung, head and neck, prostate as well as leukemia in men and breast, ovary, uterus and melanoma in women. This study also showed that current smoking was not associated with any survival benefits in any disease site. Finally, their data confirm that current smoking increase long-term OM and DSM.