Smoking cigarettes is the number one risk factor for lung cancer, with tobacco products causing up to 90 percent of lung cancer deaths in the United States.
Without a doubt, the safest way to protect yourself against lung cancer is to avoid smoking cigarettes, and yet, at the same time, it's also true that not all lifelong smokers are doomed to develop cancer.In fact, the vast majority don't. Scientists have long wondered why, and a new study adds weight to the idea that genetics has a role to play.
The findings suggest that DNA repair genes are more active among some individuals, which can protect against cancers arising, even when cigarettes are regularly smoked. Surface cells collected from the lungs of the participants were sequenced individually to measure mutations in their genomes. While the amount that someone smoked was linked to an increase in cell mutation rates, after the equivalent of about 23 years of smoking a pack a day, that risk plateaus."Our data suggest that these individuals may have survived for so long in spite of their heavy smoking because they managed to suppress further mutation accumulation. This leveling off of mutations could stem from these people having very proficient systems for repairing DNA damage or detoxifying cigarette smoke.
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