Researchers Find Two Genes Linked To Lung Cancer
The mutations of two genes appear to make ethnic Chinese more susceptible to lung cancer, researchers in China and the United States wrote in the journal Cancer.
The two genes, ABCB1 and ABCC1, were once thought to be linked to eliminating carcinogens from the lungs and protecting them against inhaled toxins.
But the researchers analyzed the genes of 500 patients with lung cancer and 517 cancer-free participants in southeastern China and found that certain (gene) variants occurred much more often in individuals with lung cancer than in cancer-free controls.
Among those with cancer, 31 percent were found with a certain mutation of the ABCB1 gene, while 27 percent were found with a variant of the ABCC1 gene.
However, those same mutations were found in only 15 percent and 12 percent of participants in the cancer-free group.
The researchers said the variant (of ABCB1) was particularly associated with an increased risk of cancer in women and in individuals under age 60 years. It also was linked to a major type of lung cancer called adenocarcinoma.
A previous study published in October in the Lancet predicted that China would see 65 million deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and 18 million deaths from lung cancer between 2003 and 2033 from smoking and biomass burning at home.
Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) said those figures would account for 19 and 5 percent respectively of all deaths in China during that period.
In China, respiratory diseases are among the 10 leading causes of death. About half of Chinese men smoke. In more than 70 percent of homes, Chinese cook and heat their homes with wood, coal and crop residues.
Image Courtesy National Institutes of Health
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