Smoking Reduces the Efficacy of Intravesical Bacillus Calmette-Guerin Immunotherapy in Non-muscle-invasive Bladder Cancer
2012
Abstrakt
Intravesical bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) immunotherapy is the most effective, adjuvant, intravesical therapy for the management of patients with non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer. We found that the efficacy of BCG therapy is compromised among current smokers, resulting in higher disease-recurrence rates compared to never and former smokers.
A possible explanation for the reduced BCG response in current smokers is that active cigarette smoking may impair cytokine activity, B- and T-cell response, and natural killer cell activation, thereby reducing the immune-stimulating effect of BCG