Jonathan Wilhoite Blog: Smoking Impacts Your DNA With A Lasting Impression

Friday, September 23, 2016

Smoking Impacts Your DNA With A Lasting Impression

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Smoking impacts your DNA as it creates a footprint that leaves a legacy of dependence on the substance even with someone who kicked the habit some 30 years ago.

Smoking impacts your DNA like a permanent marker

This, after scientists recently published a report regarding the effects of smoking and it reaches far into the recesses of the human body that it can leave a lasting impression o the surface of the DNA.

The results were gleaned from some 16000 blood samples of former smokers, smokers and non-smokers where chemical changes were discovered that is believed to affect how genes function and are known as epigenetic functions.

These changes, according to the researchers, can be used to measure risk levels of certain diseases associated with smoking and tobacco, as well as provide means for more accurate treatment methods and processes.

“We had a very large sample, which gave us a lot of power … and found sites in the genome where smoking leads to a difference in methylation,” says Dr. Stephanie London, study lead and deputy chief of the epidemiology branch of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

“The genes we found to be impacted were ones associated with smoking-related diseases,” she points out.

The dangers of smoking

The team found more than 2600 genome sites that differed from nonsmokers and smokers, which were mapped out to 7000 genes equivalent to a third of the known human genes.

For those who quit smoking, the sites returned to normal levels after five years, but many of those sites still reflected some of those markings even after they lost the habit some 30 years ago.

“Our study has found compelling evidence that smoking has a long-lasting impact on our molecular machinery, an impact that can last more than 30 years and the encouraging news is that once you stop smoking, the majority of DNA methylation signals return to never-smoker levels after five years, which means your body is trying to heal itself of the harmful impacts of tobacco smoking,” says London.

Global health hazard

According to the World Health Organization, smoking is the leading preventable cause of death all over the world. It is responsible for the deaths of 6 million people every year including some 600,000 who die from exposure to second-hand smoke.

In a separate study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, researchers from the University of Gothenberg, Sweden together with several research and educational institutions presented the results of a long-term study involving physical fitness among middle-aged men.

Researchers reveal that being unfit becomes a high risk factor for premature death, as people who have been found to sport an active lifestyle combined with a good diet and exercise are able to live longer, thus, pose less risk to premature death.

This long-term study was initiated way back in 1963 where 1000 healthy men aged 50 years old from Gothenburg who were born in 1913 gave their permission for the study for the rest of their lives to allow scientists to understand the lifetime risks of diseases , specifically with conditions affecting the heart.

The baseline data consisted of heart rate, blood pressure, weight and cholesterol levels. The men were also grouped according to those who do regular exercises and those who smoke.

After four years, extensive testing was conducted on a few of them after results were gathered from the initial tests. The new round of testing focused on determining the participants’ maximum aerobic capacity also known as VO2 max. It was through these results that scientists developed a mathematical formula that could estimate the aerobic capacity all the remaining participants.

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