Country: United States
Date: July 2008
How is nitrosoamines linked to cancer and what are they
To see the structure of nitrosamines, search nitrosamine on Wikipedia.
Nitrosamines cause cancer by inducing mutations in somatic (body) cells.
Almost all cancers arise as a result of a mutation in a body cell which
inactivates the cell's control mechanism that prevents the cell from
dividing too often. All tumors are a clone of mutated cells that started
from one mutated cell, so anything that causes mutations can be expected
to cause cancer. A mutation is any change in the base pair sequence in a
cell's DNA. This theory of carcinogenesis is known as the somatic
Ron Baker, Ph.D.
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Update: June 2012