Smokers with lung cancer who have asked “Why quit now, I’m already sick?” may find new motivation in this answer: Doing so could double their odds of survival over five years.

A report published online today in BMJ suggests that people who give up smoking after being diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer live longer than patients who continue the habit.

Quitting smoking after a diagnosis of early stage lung cancer doubles the odds that a patient will live another five years, a new study finds.

“The results are quite dramatic. I don’t think anybody would have expected such a dramatic difference. It’s incredible,” said Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association. “The important caveat is that this is early lung cancer.”

Repeated exposure to tobacco smoke makes lung cancer much worse, and one reason is that it steps up inflammation in the lung. Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found that mice with early lung cancer lesions that were repeatedly exposed to tobacco smoke developed larger tumors – and developed tumors more quickly – than unexposed animals. The key contributing factor was lung tissue inflammation.

Repeated exposure to tobacco smoke makes lung cancer much worse, and one reason is that it steps up inflammation in the lung. Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found that mice with early lung cancer lesions that were repeatedly exposed to tobacco smoke developed larger tumors – and developed tumors more quickly – than unexposed animals. The key contributing factor was lung tissue inflammation.

The state Supreme Court on Wednesday denied tobacco companies’ appeals of a San Francisco jury’s award of $2.85 million in damages to the family of a woman who died of lung cancer after smoking cigarettes for 26 years.

Six years after New York City enacted a smoking ban inside bars, restaurants and clubs, patrons of upscale nightclubs continue to light up, according to a Times investigation. Cigarettes are commonplace at venues like Goldbar, Avenue, and Griffin, the paper reports. “Everyone looks the other way,” said Guest of a Guest writer Billy Gray, 25. “It’s more of an illicit thrill now,” he said. “Like when you were a teenager and snuck a beer in your parents’ basement.”

New research from the US suggests that smoking soon after waking could increase even a light smoker’s risk of lung cancer, because the shorter the time between waking and having a first cigarette, no matter how many you smoke a day, the higher your levels of circulating cotinine, a derivative of nicotine that is made in the body and which has been linked to higher risk of lung cancer.

SMOKERS who light up first thing in the morning have a much greater chance of suffering lung cancer than those who wait till later in the day.

Scientists have found increased levels of harmful nicotine in the lungs of smokers who have their first cigarette minutes after waking.

Smokers who light up on waking display higher levels of nicotine than those who wait, regardless of the number of cigarettes smoked, US research shows.

Scientists measured smokers’ levels of cotinine, a by-product of nicotine which has been shown to reflect the risk of developing lung cancer.

Assurance of a cancer-free status did not prompt people participating in a long-term computerized tomography (CT) lung-cancer screening program to pick up their cigarettes again, researchers wrote in a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. The December issue contains a special focus on tobacco.