Smoking while undergoing chemotherapy is a poor choice for cancer patients—it significantly raises the risk of treatment failure.
Jessica van der Bol, a researcher at Erasmus Medical Center, analyzed 190 patients, including both smokers and non-smokers, all receiving chemotherapy with irinotecan, a standard cancer treatment drug.
Lower drug exposure in smokers
Comparing the groups, smokers showed up to 40% lower exposure to the active metabolite SN-38 than non-smokers.
Smokers also experienced a smaller drop in white blood cells, indicating reduced chemotherapy effectiveness. These cells are typically heavily depleted by the potent effects of chemo.
Passive smoking is far from harmless: Early exposure can lead to hearing loss in the teenage years.
Van der Bol concludes that smoking during treatment heightens the risk of chemotherapy failure, as irinotecan (also known as Campto) breaks down faster in smokers' bodies. In her thesis, she developed a new dosage formula for irinotecan to optimize treatment success for individual patients.
