New attitudes toward women and smoking had helped sell more cigarettes in the period after the first world war
Clinical trials analysing a class of cancer medication called small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors, which targets a family of proteins that are mutated in many types of cancer, showed that never-smokers, individuals with adenocarcinoma, women and people with east Asian ancestry were more likely to respond well to the drugs than people with a history of smoking 2
Another worrying finding relates to epigenetic modifications: chemicals in aerosols can alter the way the body 'reads' instructions contained in DNA, paving the way for the same mechanisms that in traditional smokers lead to the development of tumours
Bacteria, particularly Haemophilus influenzae , Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa , have been implicated in the development of smoking- related chronic lung diseases, like Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), by either direct infection or bacteria-mediated inflammation