The link between tobacco use and aneurysms of the abdominal aorta is well established, but the specific mechanisms involved have remained elusive for decades. A new study indicates that nicotine is the major culprit in cigarette smoke and provides a common mechanism of aneurysm formation that may allow the development of drugs to treat this disease, for which currently only surgical treatments exist (pages 902–910).
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Sugamura, K., Keaney, J. Nicotine: linking smoking to abdominal aneurysms. Nat Med 18, 856–858 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2714
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2714
