Why some longtime smokers have healthy lungs despite

A new study has found that some life long smokers seem to have healthy lungs due to a DNA mutation that enhances lung function.

Among those who smoked a pack of cigarettes each day, the risk of getting SCLC rose sharply through 50 years of smoking, then less sharply after that.

However, up to 1 in 6 people with COPD have never smoked. However, so will some who never smoked a cigarette in their lifetime.

The researchers, who analysed data from UK Biobank, also found genes that might determine whether a person is likely to smoke or not. However, the best way to be ensure health is by avoiding smoking altogether, the study said. Looking at these statistics and trying to understand the deeper link between COPD and other factors that impair proper lung function, such as smoking behavior, Professor Ian Hall with the University of Nottingham Queen’s Medical Center in collaboration with a wider research team generated an extensive research database from the United Kingdom Biobank.

The research used the first analyses of genetic data from participants in the UK Biobank, which has the medical profiles of almost 500,000 people recruited between 2006 and 2010 when they were aged 40 to 69. 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.

They tackled the issue of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a common effect of smoking and one of the lead causes in premature deaths worldwide.

It’s rare indeed, but it is possible that healthy smokers have mutant lungs that prevents them from developing smoking-related diseases and offers an extra protection against the unhealthy vice.

“These findings, taken together with previous findings, will help define pathways underlying predisposition to development of COPD and smoking behaviours”, the authors noted. “A full understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying these genetic associations will improve our understanding of the pathophysiology of COPD and smoking behaviour, and potentially give rise to novel therapeutic strategies for the management of airway disease and prevention of nicotine addiction”. “Ultimately, we would like to see improved prevention and treatment of lung disease and these discoveries are important steps towards this ambitious goal”.

“Because lung cancer represents a set of tumors with confounding and sometimes misleading symptoms in both smokers and nonsmokers, we felt that it was of particular importance to acquire this knowledge”, study author Dr. Catia Saraiva said in a European Lung Foundation news release.