“This work suggests that we need to tease out the mechanisms by which COPD may increase lung cancer risk in smokers, and to conduct clinical trials to determine whether treating COPD in former and current smokers lessens that risk”, said David Christiani, Elkan Blout Professor of Environmental Genetics at Harvard Chan School and senior author of the study.
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A new study has found that some life long smokers seem to have healthy lungs due to a DNA mutation that enhances lung function.
The team looked at the Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) that leads to coughing, breathlessness and repeat chest infections.
Five independent genetic variants were discovered which were associated with heavy smoking.
Hall, along with professor Martin Tobin from University of Leicester and colleagues sampled individuals from the “UK Biobank” with the best, average or the poorest lung function among heavy smokers and never smokers. She also thinks that in order to confirm their analysis, a population-based research needs to be done before any public teaching or news should be disseminated, as studies that are presented in medical meetings are still preliminary. These prevented COPD and other smoking-related diseases.
Numerous nonsmokers were diagnosed at an advanced stage of lung cancer, including 59 percent at stage four, when the cancer had already spread to other parts of the body, the study found.
The team discovered six independent genetic variants associated with lung health and COPD. 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 researchers found that certain people were less at risk of COPD despite smoking due to the genes they possess which affect how the lungs recover from injury. “Understanding how the genes are involved in disease or in addiction to tobacco, can help us design and develop better and more targeted treatments that are likely to be more effective and have fewer side effects”. But the genes do play a key role in lung disease. Researchers surveyed 50,000 people, all volunteers for the UK’s Biobank project, for its findings. The researchers dived deep to understand the genetic basis of airflow obstruction in relation to smoking behaviour to identify the root causes of COPD. Researching why such differences exist could improve diagnosis and treatment, researchers say.
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In the authors’ words: “These findings, taken together with previous findings, will help define pathways underlying predisposition to development of COPD and smoking behaviors”.
