Word: cancerous
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...These are very interesting and potentially very, very important findings," says Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association. "They put nicotine front and center in smoking-related diseases, including lung cancer...
What sets the new research apart from previous studies of lung-cancer genes is the researchers' effort to separate the influence of genetic variants on cancer risk from the impact of years of smoking. One study - led by scientists at DeCODE Genetics in Iceland - found that smokers who had one copy of either of the genetic variants smoked more per day than others. The findings suggest that the specific gene variants may increase nicotine addiction, making smokers less likely to quit smoking, and, therefore, increasing their risk of cancer...
...other two studies examined the cancer risk and smoking habits of current and former smokers, with and without cancer, with a carefully matched control group of never-smokers. While the variants were associated with an increased risk of lung cancer in smokers, that genetic predisposition is not destiny. In the U.S.-based study, led by Christopher Amos, an epidemiologist at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, people who never smoked but still had the genetic variants showed no increased risk of lung cancer, which suggests that nicotine might be necessary to trigger the tumor-building process - and that smokers...
Amos's study included only a small number of nonsmokers, however; the European study, which included a larger sample, did find a slightly higher risk of lung cancer in nonsmokers with the genetic variants. That could explain some of the genetic risk that leads to lung cancer in the 10% of men and 20% of women who develop the disease every year despite never having...
Whatever the new weapons against smoking addiction may be, the authors stress that we already know the best way to prevent it - by not smoking in the first place. Cancer risk aside, smoking also increases the risk of emphysema and heart disease; what's more, smokers without the genetic variants are not at all protected from developing lung cancer or any other smoking-related disease. "Nothing in these papers should give people comfort in terms of continuing smoking," says Edelman, "even after they have their genetic profiles looked at. But if we can use this information to develop better approaches...