Study suggests why most smokers don't get lung cancer

Some people's bodies develop special mechanisms to limit gene mutations, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York said.

This may explain why not all long-term smokers develop lung cancer.

In the study, the results of which were described in the journal Nature Genetics, the experts used an improved way of sequencing individual cell genomes - SCMDA. The scientists then collected cells from the lungs of patients who had undergone bronchoscopy, the purpose of which was unrelated to cancer. As it turned out, mutations accumulate in the lung cells of nonsmokers as they age, but significantly more mutations were found in the lung cells of smokers.

According to the scientists, smoking increases the risk of lung cancer by increasing the frequency of mutations. This is probably one reason why so few nonsmokers get lung cancer, while people who smoke all their lives have a 10 to 20 percent risk of developing the disease.

Researchers also found that the number of cell mutations found in lung cells increased with the number of years of smoking, which also increased the risk of developing lung cancer. However, after 23 years of smoking a pack of cigarettes daily, the growth of cell mutations usually stops.

The scientists said the study opens a new direction for work related to a person's ability to repair DNA or detoxify, which may offer a new way to assess lung cancer risk.

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