Lung Cancer Question?

Question

How does smoking damage the lungs beginning with the columnar cells in the bronchi to how cancer cells spread?

Answer 1

I'm thinking you need to do your own homework.

google the national heart lung and blood institute, you might actually learn something.

Answer 2

The smoke itself contains many carcinogens including: benzopyrene, nitrosonornicotine and formaldehyde. These and the other many carcinogens in smoke cause mutations from a variety of mechanisms, but usually it needs to damage DNA at a cellular level. This can cause many different changes:
1.Turn "off" the cells normal mechanism for cell death, or apoptosis, so that the cells multiple out of control. This causes the masses, or tumors of cancer.
2.Can change the cell type, which is called metaplasia. This is what happens in some kinds of esophageal cancer.
3.The DNA changes so that a new protein is made that is not of normal function. This problem couple with #1 also makes a mass.
4.The actual spread of the disease can really only occur via 2 mechanism:the blood and the lymph. This is unrelated to the smoke and is a side effect of normal body function.
Bottom line is:Bad chemicals in the smoke messes up the DNA of otherwise normal cells changing the normal cell type and causing them to replicate without any cellular regulation.

Answer 3

Carcinogens in tobacco and cigarettes cause dysplasia which causes the normal cells in the lungs to grow into different types (for example from columnar to squamous). This is the pathogenesis of lung cancer (cancer in general is caused by dysplasia). The dysplastic cells will then multiply and spread.