Smokers who had COPD had a 1.86 times greater risk of developing small cell carcinoma of the lungs as did smokers who did not have COPD. “But we need to confirm our results through population-based studies, before public education issues can be addressed”. FEV1 or how much air is exhaled in the first second of measurement was crucial for the research to indicate how healthy the lungs of the participants were.
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Five independent genetic variants were discovered which were associated with heavy smoking. This was also despite external factors like smoking.
Hall said: “The drugs we use to prevent or treat diseases target the proteins in our bodies, and our genes influence the production of proteins”.
The team now hopes to expands its research into the remainder of the 500,000 participants once the data becomes available in 2016. The study was conducted by the UK BiLEVE – UK Lung Exome Variant Evaluation team of researchers. More findings from this study will be released in 2016. The team of researchers found that the number of copies of duplicated sequence of the genome on Chromosome 17 was directly linked with the lung health in both the heavy smokers and non-smokers.
The enigma of why a few people are able to smoke heavily into their 90s without ever developing a lung condition has been explained by scientists.
The researchers examined smokers and non-smokers as well as those with COPD and those without it. Researchers then compared these characteristics were with a stunning 28 million genetic variants in each of the 50,000 subjects. The researchers identified the genetic differences related to the likelihood of someone becoming addicted to cigarettes as well as the risk of either heavy smokers or non-smokers having poor lung health.
But not smoking will always be the best option, they say. They found out that people with “good genes” were less likely to suffer from COPD than those with the “bad genes”. It may be a chronic disease but it can be prevented and treated by lifestyle changes. That said, it is easy to understand that smoking increases lung cancer risk. Many, but not all, smokers develop the disease. Genetics, however, also play a big role in whether or not the disease is acquired.
“The strongest thing that people can do to affect their future health in terms of COPD and also smoking-related disease like cancer and heart disease is to stop smoking”.
Besides including information on the participants’ health, gender, age, race, education level, and family history of lung cancer, scientists also took into consideration their smoking history.
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Ian Jarrold, head of research at the British Lung Foundation, called the findings “a significant step forward in helping us achieve a clearer picture about… lung health”.
