COPD, also known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is a condition that mainly affects the airways of the lungs and is a progressive illness that features cough, wheezing, tightness in the chest, the production of large amounts of thick phlegm, and shortness of breath.
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The scientists’ findings may have given lifetime smokers with healthy lungs the upper hand in fighting lung cancer, but experts are saying that this should not be the reason to continue on smoking. “We believe that the differences we found between the two groups will help improve diagnosis, and prompt investigators to try to find out why these differences occur”. “Stopping smoking is the best way to prevent smoking-related diseases such as COPD, cancers and heart disease”, he said. A team of investigators funded by the Medical Research Council said that treatments for diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) could be developed following the results of this research.
For their study, researchers analyzed the data of more than 50,000 volunteers from UK’s Biobank project. In this study, the UK Biobank Lung Exome Variant Evaluation (UK BiLEVE) [2], the authors generated extensive new genetic data in the UK Biobank to investigate the genetic causes of smoking behaviour and lung health. Smokers, especially heavy smokers, are likely to develop lung problems in the future.
Certain genetic variants in the human genome may protect smokers from disease.
By comparing smokers and non-smokers as well as those with the disease and without they discovered sections of our DNA that reduce the risk of COPD.
Additional findings from this study will be released next year.
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”. Understanding the role of genes in addiction to tobacco or other substances or diseases can be helpful in developing and designing more targeted and better treatments which can possibly be more effective and with minimal side effects. The study concluded that there are a few smokers with a specific mutations in their DNA that helps them keep healthy lungs than those who do not have the mutations.
The study involved a total of 152,030 subjects, all of European ancestry. The researchers wanted to gain a better understanding of the “genetic architecture of smoking behavior and lung function phenotypes”, airflow obstruction in particular. This is because it’s a natural tendency for the non-smokers to assume that they won’t be affected by lung cancer.
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The scientists also uncovered parts of the genetic code which were more common in smokers than non-smokers.
