Saturday 27 December 2014

Genes explain why some drinkers and smokers die young, while others escape

Two newly identified genes can increase the chances of an unhealthy lifestyle giving you cancer, scientists believe.

Someone smoking: Smokers 'would rather give up for their dog's health than their own'
Second-hand smoke can be harmful to a pet's lung, causing respiratory problems and even cancer Photo: GEOFF PUGH

The findings could explain why some heavy drinkers and smokers live to a ripe old age while others have their lives cut short by their habits.

The genes put carriers more at a heightened risk of developing five different types of cancer, the researchers found - skin, lung, bladder, prostate and cervical cancer.

Lung cancer in particular is one of the most deadly, killing around 35,000 sufferers in Britain every year.

The findings could allow scientists to identify those most at risk from suffering the potentially deadly conditions because of a combination of genetics and their lifestyle.

The researchers estimate that around one quarter of the population have the highest risk that their unhealthy lifestyle would give them cancer.

Another quarter of the population have the lowest risk, because they do not carry these genes, they estimate.

These could be the people who remain hale and hearty into old age even in spite of smoking, drinking, using sunbeds of having a poor diet.

However, as yet the scientists did not know by how much these two genes can increase the overall lifetime chance of developing a form of the disease.

On average humans have a one in three chance of developing some form of cancer over their lifetime.

Scientists have long known that lifestyle and environment can affect a person's risk of developing many types of cancer.

Smoking has previously been linked to lung and bladder cancer, drinking to different types of cancer including liver cancer, and eating a diet high in red meat to an increased risk of bowel cancer.

But researchers have never been clear on the exact nature of how these exposures increase risk, and why some people appear more prone to their effects than others.

Tim Bishop, professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Leeds, and one of the co-authors of the paper, said that cancer was often caused by a "complex" interplay between genetic and environmental factors, and that these newly identified genes could go some way to explaining their relationship.

The scientists were able to isolate the genes by looking at the genetic make up of more than 33,000 cancer survivors and another 45 ,000 people who had never suffered from the disease.

They then compared the genes against their carrier's lifestyle and history of the disease.

While they increased the chance of suffering from five types of cancer the genes were not linked to an increased risk of another nine cancers for which the researchers could test, including breast cancer, the most commonly diagnosed form of the disease in women, according to the findings, published in the journal Nature Genetics.

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