Smoking is the main risk factor for lung cancer. However, diagnoses are also made between people who have never been smoked. They make up about 25%, and cases increase, despite the fact that tobacco consumes less and fewer people. Find out why this is one of the puzzles for researchers studying this area, and which more and more indicate the effect of pollution on increased risk of developing the disease.
The greatest genomic analysis carried out today in diagnosed and unconventional people, out of about thirty seats in the world, “first shows the relationship between lung cancer and damage to DNA for breathing polluted air,” emphasizes the National Center for Oncological Research (CNIO), whose head of digital genomics, Marcos Gay, is the first author of the study. ‘Nature’.
Neopepers who lived in more polluted environments represented a larger number of mutations in their tumors, including tobacco consumption, stated that a study that was jointly directed by Lyudmil Alexandrov, from the University of California to the San Distha and Maria Teresa Landy, the National Institute of Cancer (NCI) of the National Institute of American Health (NIH).
“We are observing this anxious trend that those who have never smoked are developing more and more lung cancer, and we do not understand why. Our study shows that air pollution is closely associated with the same type of DNA mutations that we usually associate with smoking, ”says Alexandrov. This is a type of cancer, which especially affects women of Asian origin, and, as a rule, more frequent in East Asia than in Western countries.
The work after dividing 871 of the tumor also confirms that the smoking of the second tobacco does not explain most of the extraction of lung cancer in non -consumers.
“The main novelty is that the relationship between air pollution (PM2.5) and a significant increase in somatic mutations, shorter telomeres and specific mutation firms, such as SBS4, SBS5 and ID3,” Spain of scientific media. Telomeres are cabbages that cover the ends of the chromosons, and their shortening is a sign of cell aging.
Notification for the authorities
With the help of this study, the importance of environmental pollution continues as a “key factor in pulmonary carcinogenesis in non -SMOKOKS” and is a warning for state bodies in the control of air pollution. The work also identifies new mutation firms that prevail in profiles not related to non -cheating, such as SBS40, although its reasons are unknown.
There has never before had such a detailed analysis of the genome between people with lung cancer who does not smoke. Although in previous studies he revealed the “epidemiological connection between air pollution and lung cancer in people not related to them, a new study goes on, showing the genomic connection,” says Cnio.
In addition, it simply includes a sample that is not related to non -hinters, “the possible factor of confusion of tobacco and some carcinogens that it contains is eliminated, which are similar to some environmental pollutants, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,” says Alberto Ruano Ravin, a professor of preventive medicine and public health of the University of Santago.
On the other hand, researchers remember that tobacco remains the main risk factor (as well as preventive) for the development of lung cancer. With these results, the door also opens to explore the synergy of tobacco and pollution, which was not studied in this study.
