14 DAY TRIAL // Not everybody who smokes dies young. There are some who live well into old age, even though they never get around to kicking the habit. What's more, their lungs stay perfectly healthy.
An investigation whose findings were revealed this Monday at a meeting of the European Respiratory Society in Amsterdam found this is because a person's genetic profile greatly influences their risk of experiencing poor lung health.
The discovery also explains why it is that people who have never touched a cigarette in their life sometimes develop lung trouble. Again, it all comes down to the genes they've been dealt.
“The research team has identified genetic differences which affect the likelihood of whether or not a person will smoke, and the predisposition of both heavy smokers and non-smokers to suffer from poor lung health,” explain scientists at the University of Nottingham.
How the investigation played out
As part of their study, the University of Nottingham specialists and their colleagues at the University of Leicester looked at the lung health and the genetic profile of about 50,000 people, both smokers and non-smokers.
They discovered that parts of the human genome have a direct influence on lung health, and that, quite interestingly, there are also DNA sections that correlate with being a heavy smoker.
As noted, it's such genetic differences that explain why some smokers stay healthy even in old age. Plainly put, they have good genes, which means their lungs have an easier time recovering from the damage that comes with exposure to tobacco smoke.
Similarly, non-smokers who have been dealt bad genes are made vulnerable to poor lung health by their genetic profile, even though they have never smoked a cigarette in their life.
“The discoveries help to explain why some people can have relatively good lung health, despite smoking, and why some can suffer from lung conditions even if they have never smoked before,” the research team sum up their findings.
The importance of this study
Cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and heart trouble are the conditions most often associated with smoking. Now that they know their very genes make some people quite resilient to them, the scientists behind this research project are thinking about using this information to develop better treatments for these conditions.
“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,” explains specialist Ian Hall.
Before they move on to putting this theory of theirs to the test, however, the researchers want to redo the study and look at the genetic profile and lung health of 500,000 people, just to get a better idea of how exactly genetics influences smoking behavior and the risk of getting sick from indulging in one too many cigarettes.