| Another Possible Hazard Caused by Nicotine |
|
|
|
advertisement
|
By Lee Bowman
Scripps Howard News Service Scientists are warning that smokers using nicotine patches and gum in efforts to quit may face another problem -- a nicotine byproduct that could be hazardous. Chemists at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, stress that their research is preliminary and based only on lab observations. But they say their work suggests that smokers who use cessation aids, and take prescription drugs, could be at greater risk of having the medications interact with the byproduct, to harmful effect. The researchers said the byproduct, a compound called nornicotine, stays in the bloodstream of heavy smokers at relatively constant levels and that those levels could be dangerously elevated by nicotine supplements. The study is published in the April 3 issue of Journal of the American Chemical Society, and online. "This represents another potentially adverse chemical found in tobacco that's coming from nicotine itself,'' said the study's lead author, chemistry professor Kim Janda. "We've got to be more aware of this.'' Although nicotine has been known for some time to be a dangerous substance with addictive properties, the study is the first to examine the chemical potential of a nicotine metabolite to affect chemical processes in the body. Janda and graduate student Tobin Dickerson were searching for new ways to treat nicotine addiction when they decided to conduct a detailed chemical analysis of nicotine's breakdown products. They found that while nicotine alone doesn't do much, nornicotine acts as a catalyst to reactions that play a major role in processing chemicals that circulate through the body. This was surprising because it was thought that only certain enzymes were able to trigger those reactions. Nornicotine is not an enzyme, but an alkaloid that's historically been extracted from tobacco as a pesticide. Janda and Dickerson demonstrated that nornicotine could interact with many important chemical reactions, including the conversion of glucose into energy. They also identified certain medications that seem likely to interact with nornicotine and could cause potentially adverse health effects by modifying the drugs - including steroids and antibiotics -- to possibly reduce potency or enhance side effects. The researchers are now doing more tests to try and work out specific effects in animals and humans, and specifically which drugs might put smokers and users of other nicotine products at increase health risk. "We don't yet know how the compound behaves in the body, but the reactions in the laboratory setting call into question its safety,'' said Janda, who also underscores the need to avoid nicotine. Meanwhile, those trying to quit smoking may want to look for treatments that don't use nicotine replacement. "Unfortunately, although some nicotine-free treatments are currently undergoing testing, to our knowledge, there are no such smoking-cessation therapies currently available over the counter,'' Janda added. (Lee Bowman covers health and science for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail BowmanL@shns.com.)
| 
