Smoking weakens cancer protective genes

Smoking weakens cancer protective genes
In smokers, the genes that are supposed to protect against cancer are significantly weakened. British researchers have discovered a further reason for this in the context of a comprehensive study: Smoking has a massive impact on the hereditary factors of those affected. Smoking is the most common cause of cancer worldwide.

Methyl groups switch genes off
The scientists from the Institute of Cancer Studies in Birmingham have been able to demonstrate how the pollutants absorbed by tobacco affect smoker genes. According to them, methyl groups are formed around vital genes, thereby shutting off these genes. Particularly affected was the gene p16, which should actually help the organism to protect itself from cancer.

Three times higher risk for smokers
Study Director Dr. Yuk Ting Ma explained that her team examined 2,000 young women between the ages of 15 and 19, with some women smoking after starting their studies, but the remaining women remained abstinent. Among other things, the attachment of methyl groups to the gene p16 was the focus of interest of the researchers. They concluded that tobacco consumption tripled the risk of methyl group attachment to the p 16 gene. „Women who later started smoking for the first time had an increased risk of p16 methylation“, explained Yuk Ting Ma at the presentation of her study results at the Milan Cancer Conference.

Smoking alters the function of more than 300 genes
That smoking has an effect on the function of genes has been known for some time. For example, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research of San Antonio, Texas, recently published a study identifying more than 300 genes whose functions are altered by smoking. How the functional change by the ingested pollutants takes place, was so far not clarified. Here, the British researchers have come a good step further with the discovered process of methyl group attachment to the genes. This may also explain why tobacco consumption affects not only individual genes but entire networks of genes.

The fact that the altered function of genes is directly related to the diseases caused by cigarette smoke is obvious to the scientists. For by the addition of methyl groups and the corresponding altered gene activity, the immune system is adversely affected because many genes relevant for the defense against pathogens are severely impaired in their function. Because this particularly affects genes that are supposed to protect the organism from cancer, the high number of cancers among smokers is also due to some extent to the altered gene functions. (fp, 17.10.2010)

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