Lung cancer specialist raises concerns over impact of vaping

Vaping could lead to narrowing or blocking of blood-vessels, heart disease and premature ageing, a leading oncologist and specialist in lung cancer has warned.

Ken O’Byrne, originally from Dublin and now professor of medical oncology at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Queensland University of Technology in Australia, is back in Ireland to speak at an international oncology symposium this week.

While his main focus will be on the “dramatic” and “exciting” strides of the last decade in treating and even “curing” lung cancer, he said “we all have to have concerns” about the explosion in vaping in recent years.

“It is still nicotine and is addictive. Nicotine itself may be cancerous, the way it works in the cell. But, also, it may encourage cigarette smoking later on. So, we all have to have concerns about that. Certainly, in my own view, there needs to be much more strict legislation and control of the fashion of vaping.

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“It is too early to know the long-term impact but the nicotine will almost certainly cause peripheral vascular disease. There is potential heart disease, cancer and premature ageing.”

Prof O’Byrne will address oncology colleagues from across the globe on Friday at the symposium hosted by the St Vincent’s hospital-based Cancer Clinical Research Trust, on his research.

Of greater interest to the public, however, and particularly to those with lung cancer or concerned about someone with lung cancer, will be his talk on Wednesday evening in Ballsbridge, which will be open to the public.

“I’ll be talking about targeted therapies and a lot about immune therapy and screening,” he said on Sunday. “I will be talking too about the increasing incidence of lung-cancer among patients who gave up smoking years ago and people who never smoked.”

Former smokers now account for up to 50 per cent of patients presenting with lung cancer while “never-smokers” account for about 10 per cent in Ireland and up to 25 per cent in east-Asia. Pollution is likely to be behind lung cancer in these “never smokers”, he said.

“There are these poor people who come in who have never smoked and they are devastated. Or people who smoked for 10 or 15 years in their youth. They make up the majority and increasing proportion of patients and yet, there is still a kind of prejudice against people who get lung cancer, that the people are smokers and brought it on themselves. It’s important we overcome that stigma. Lung cancer is a disease like any other.”

There is enormous scope for optimism, though, he added.

“What we have been trying to do is improve patients’ outcomes and we are doing that, quite dramatically, in two ways,” he explained.

“The first is that, by understanding the biology of cancer, we have been able to identify mutations in cancer that can be treated with tablets. With these, in for example one called epidermal growth factor receptor mutation the average survival is about four years [previously the survival time was months]. People will still die from the disease but they live four years or for some much longer.

“The other is called ALK – anaplastic lymphoma kinase.” With treatment, he said, “78 per cent of these patients will be alive in five years. So, we are making significant breakthroughs in subsets of cancer.

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“Those patients who don’t have these mutations, immune therapy is having a large impact. They will have good quality of life and will be well and significant numbers are cured.” He said dramatic improvements have been seen in the last decade.

“And there are new ways of delivering immune therapies coming through which are very exciting. In early stage disease, if the patients present early enough, we can cure a big chunk of them. With screening, we are going to pick up a lot of these cancers earlier and we are going to cure them. So, hopefully, lung cancer will become like breast cancer and those people who have given up cigarettes and done their best to be healthy and good will get the benefits of all of that.”

Prof O’Byrne’s public symposium, Dare2Cure, takes place at 6.30pm on Wednesday, September 27th, at Herbert Park Hotel, Dublin. Details at eventbrite.ie and for a link to the live-stream, email: Neil.conlon@dcu.ie