LungBlog

Among women, the excess mortality risk associated with smoking does diminish down to the same levels as never smokers after quitting, but it can take up to 30 years, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

People who have spent most of their lives smoking may derive health benefits within five years of quitting - drastically reducing their chance of dying from a heart attack, stroke or lung cancer, according to a study published today.

In just five years, quitters reduced their added risk of dying of a heart attack by 47 percent and of lung cancer by 21 percent. Over time, their risk declined to the level of nonsmokers.

Women who stop smoking dramatically reduce their risk of heart disease and stroke by 20 percent within five years, and have a lung cancer risk similar to that of a non-smoker after 30 years, a new study shows.The findings support previous research that removing tobacco from the body is beneficial to health.

The question is: Why do some longtime smokers come down with the deadly disease whereas others escape it? New research points to a genetic culprit that also was fingered as upping a person’s likelihood of becoming hooked on cigarettes.

Two new studies link a variation in a gene residing on chromosome 15 (of a person’s 23 pairs of chromosomes) to a heightened risk of developing lung cancer; a third study suggests that the same mutation  affects a person’s tendency to become addicted to smokes and, by extension, develop the dreaded disease. Lung cancer is diagnosed in some 200,000 Americans and kills more than 150,000 each year.

An International group of researchers found two SNPs linked to an increased risk of lung cancer.The team collected DNA from 1,154 smokers who have lung cancer and 1,137 smokers without lung cancer. Each DNA sample was analyzed for SNPs that differed between the two groups. They then analyzed the top 10 SNPs in an additional 5,075 DNA samples from smokers with and without lung cancer.

A genetic variation that is strongly linked to the risk of developing lung cancer has been independently pinpointed by labs here, in Iceland, and in France. 

But the three groups disagree on whether the variant — found on the long arm of chromosome 15 — causes the disease directly or by increasing addiction to cigarettes.

How many scientists does it take to find a gene? If it’s a gene as important as one that raises your risk of lung cancer, at least 142—the number of researchers who conducted three separate studies being published today which all identify the same stretch of chromosome 15 as containing genes linked to lung cancer.How many scientists does it take to figure out what the genes do and how important they are? More than 142, apparently, for the three groups have reached dramatically different conclusions about exactly how the genes function to make you more likely to develop lung cancer. Two conclude that the genes directly raise your risk of developing lung cancer whether or not you smoke, while one concludes that the genes make you more likely to smoke and only through that effect on behavior raise your risk of lung cancer.

Scientists have found important genetic differences between people that may help explain why some smokers get lung cancer and others do not.Three teams from France, Iceland and the United States said on Wednesday they had pinpointed a region of the genome containing genes that can put smokers at even greater risk of contracting the killer disease.

Smokers are much more likely to develop lung cancer than nonsmokers — that has been a scientific truism for decades. But what about the 80% of smokers who don’t develop lung cancer? Are they just the lucky ones? A trio of new studies suggests that the explanation for why they escape the disease may lie partly in their genes.