Researchers have revealed the path that tobacco smoke takes as it travels throughout the body and have shown the destruction it can cause along the way.
Writing in the journal, Science Translational Medicine, the scientists tracked the path that smoke takes through tissues and demonstrated how it accomplishes its destructive work.
The researchers looked at the effect of smoke in mice that were exposed to conditions which closely simulated how humans smoke.
The findings have also shown that emphysema is caused by a specific immune response induced by the smoke, rather and a non-specific response to long-term exposure to smoke, as previously thought. The authors state that the inflammation which drives emphysema could also drive the development of lung cancer, however, further studies are needed in order to confirm this theory?.