Smoking Permanently Damages Your DNA, Study Finds (nbcnews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Smoking scars DNA in clear patterns, researchers reported Tuesday. Most of the damage fades over time, they found -- but not all of it. Their study of 16,000 people found that while most of the disease-causing genetic footprints left by smoking fade after five years if people quit, some appear to stay there forever. The marks are made in a process called methylation, which is an alteration of DNA that can inactivate a gene or change how it functions -- often causing cancer and other diseases. The team examined blood samples given by 16,000 people taking part in various studies going back to 1971. In all the studies, people have given blood samples and filled out questionnaires about smoking, diet, lifestyle and their health histories. They found smokers had a pattern of methylation changes affecting more than 7,000 genes, or one-third of known human genes. Many of the genes had known links to heart disease and cancers known to be caused by smoking. Among quitters, most of these changes reverted to the patterns seen in people who never smoked after about five years, the team reported in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics. But smoking-related changes in 19 genes, including the TIAM2 gene linked to lymphoma, lasted 30 years, the team found.

Comments

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you oughta die from something, it may well be something you enjoy, like smoking, food, alcohol or whatever.

Dying from good health after you've been starving yourself of every pleasure all your life is, well, pointless.

Re:Pollution?

[BarbaraHudson]

Yes.

Secondhand smoke contains the same stuff as firsthand smoke, just in lower quantity.

You mean that first-hand smoke is of better quality? (Wouldn't know myself. Never tried it, but the second-hand stuff is disgusting and does kill people who have never smoked..

On the one hand, she was awarded workmen's compensation for the cancer that eventually killed her, but on the other hand, it doesn't really compensate for being dead.