Harmful cigarette smoking How smoking affects our genes

Influence on the genes: What exactly causes smoking in our body

Smoking, especially the lung harms, has long been known. But tobacco consumption has far more harmful effects, including our genes. German researchers have now gained new insights into what the blue haze in our body exactly does.

Cigarette consumption damages your health

The fact that tobacco consumption harms health is nothing new. Smokers not only get sick and die of lung cancer. The smoke of cigarettes also increases the risk of several other types of cancer and other diseases such as smoker's or smoker's cough, asthma, chronic bronchitis and heart attack and stroke. In addition, cigarette consumption has a negative impact on our genes, as German researchers now report.

It has long been known that smoking harms health. But only gradually does it become clear what exactly causes the blue haze in our body. German researchers have now gained new insights. (Image: BillionPhotos.com/fotolia.com)

Molecular details about the consequences of smoking

It has long been known that smoking is harmful, but only gradually does it become clear what exactly the blue haze causes in our body.

Scientists at the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) have now uncovered new molecular details about the consequences of tobacco use.

According to a DZHK statement, the gene for a receptor involved in inflammation and new blood vessel formation is more frequently read in smokers than in non-smokers.

It also depends on how much smoking is done

For the study, DZHK scientist Tina Haase, a doctoral candidate in the working group of Professor Tanja Zeller, both from the Department of General and Interventional Cardiology of the University Heart Center of the UKE, evaluated the data of a total of 1,292 subjects in a large population-based study.

According to the data, 593 of them were non-smokers, 477 former smokers and 221 smokers. According to the experts, the gene for the G protein-coupled receptor 15 (GPR15) was significantly more active in smokers than in non-smokers.

The gene activity was strongly associated with the number of cigarettes smoked per year: the more someone smoked, the more the GPR15 gene was read.

The results of the study were published in the journal "Biomolecules".

Process can be reversed again

The good news is that this process can be reversed again. Anyone who had quit smoking, after some time, again a lower activity of the GPR15 gene.

However, the activity of the gene remained high among the study participants who had continued to smoke unabated.

The researchers examined the long-term effects of smoking on the basis of the data collected at the beginning of the study and after five years.

The data of ex-smokers also showed that the decrease in GPR15 activity was associated with the years since cigarette abstinence and fell the most in the first few years.

GPR15 is involved in the formation of new blood vessels as well as inflammatory processes. Its exact role in these processes is not yet understood.

"Smoking is one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease. In part, the diseases are caused by inflammatory processes. It is therefore very interesting to study the regulation and function of GPR15 in the cardiovascular system, "says Haase.

Smoking leaves traces on the genetic material

At the beginning of the investigations it was already known that a chemical change at a certain region in the GPR15 gene is linked to smoking.

This is a methylation, ie the attachment of a small methyl group to certain building blocks of the genetic material.

These small changes can affect how heavily packed and how active certain DNA sections are.

The research team was interested in the entire GPR15 gene and identified three new regions that are more methylated in non-smokers than in smokers.

When smoking ceases, methylation in these regions increases steadily, in parallel with the decreasing activity of the GPR15 gene.

"It is quite possible that smoking may decrease the methylation of the GPR15 gene, which makes it harder to read the gene," says Haase.

Accurately assess smoking behavior

Occasional smoker, pure party smoker, stress chain smoker - how much someone smokes is not that easy to measure. Currently, questionnaires are used for this purpose.

Haase sees a possible application of their results here: Since GPR15 is regulated depending on the amount of cigarettes smoked, the GPR15 gene activity could be used as a biomarker to more accurately capture smoking behavior in the future.

In principle, G protein-coupled receptors can also be very well medicated.

"Therefore, GPR15 is an exciting target, especially for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. But that is still a distant future, "says the young scientist. (Ad)