Oxford, UK – Smokers who find it hard to cut down or quit may be at the mercy of their genes.
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Scientists identified three genetic mutations that increase the number of cigarettes people smoke a day.
Several also appear to be associated with taking up smoking, and one with being able to quit.
The findings could lead to more personalized – and ultimately more effective – treatments that help people stub out their cigarettes.
Three studies published online in Nature Genetics compared the DNA of a total of more than 140,000 people and discovered the desire to give up is down to your genes rather than willpower.
Two of them found regions associated to the number of cigarettes smoked per day that include two genes that have been linked with nicotine dependence and two others that regulate nicotine metabolism in the body.
Mutations in these genes are associated with a small increase in smoking quantity – about half a cigarette a day – but around 10 per cent increase in risk of lung cancer compared with non carriers.
Lead author Professor Kari Stefansson, a neurologist at deCODE genetics in Reykjavik, Iceland, said: ‘Smoking is bad for anyone’s health. It is even worse for some.
‘To some degree these variants suggest those for whom nicotine is more addictive are driven to smoke more, increasing their exposure to environmental risk.
‘But given the quite substantial corresponding increases in risk of lung cancer it may also be that they make people more susceptible to the noxious effects of tobacco smoke.
‘What is clear is that these variants – which are all near genes that encode nicotine metabolizing enzymes and receptors – are giving us a solid starting point for finding answers to advance personal and public health.’
A third study by Dr Clyde Francks, of the University of Oxford, and colleagues found variants of three genes on chromosome 15 that make people more prone to nicotine addiction. Nicotine is the primary chemical responsible for smoking addiction.
He said: ‘Smoking behavior and nicotine dependence are multifactorial traits with substantial genetic influences. There is an urgent need to better understand the molecular neurobiology of nicotine dependence in order to design targeted, more effective therapies.
‘These findings have provided further new insights into the biology of smoking behaviour.’
l disagree with them,people need nutrtrients like nican which is what people are getting when they smoke ’cause tob has nican
nonsense if you really really really want to stop you could stop
Soon they will find a ‘gene’ that makes people commit certain crimes.. what a field day the defense will have.
Nicotine is a very powerful chemical which directly affects things like the brain’s reward cycle. The research has pretty conclusively shown that it’s much more difficult to quite tobacco than it is to quit heroin or cocaine. It should not be surprising to find there’s a genetic component to susceptibility to this addiction.
It’s always easy to play the blame game. My husband B”H stopped smoking after 40 years on his own. He got the patches free from N.Y.C. and did the first 8 days and on the 9th he took the patch to work to try “on his own” and B”H the rest is history.
As the saying goes “where there is a will there is a way”.
It’s a shame to watch youngsters as young as pre Bar Mitzvah age smoking….and where is the money coming from….yes, in addition to smoking they are stealing to suppport their bad habit. This is happening in the best of Yeshivos and yes ladies, girls too!