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Non-smokers and lung cancer, the causes of the disease discovered

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A new study was carried out to clarify how lung cancers are triggered in people who have never smoked. And to describe the mutations, music-inspired expressions such as soft, half-loud, strong are used.

International research published in the journal Nature Genetics marks an important step towards future personalized therapies and more precise diagnoses and has revealed how mutations depend on natural processes within cells.

Scholars have begun to lift the veil on a hitherto mysterious phenomenon led by the Italian Maria Teresa Landi who, after her doctorate in Molecular Epidemiology at the University of Milan, has settled in the USA for many years, where she works in the Division of Epidemiology and Genetics from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda. Italian participation in research is important, with the foundations Irccs Casa Sollievo della Sofevole in San Giovanni Rotondo, Ca ‘Granda Ospedale Maggiore in Milan and Regina Elena in Rome, University of Bari.

As for the more than two million people diagnosed with lung cancer every year, the majority are smokers and it is estimated that only a small proportion, between 10% and 15%, have never smoked. It is possible that some people get sick from exposure to secondhand smoke or other environmental factors, from radon to pollutants, but the mechanism that makes non-smokers sick has not been known until now.

The first data now come from research coordinated by Landi and based on the DNA sequence of tumors taken from 232 patients who had never smoked and with lung cancer, 75% of them women and with an average age of about 65 years. “What we’re seeing is that there are several lung cancer subtypes in nonsmokers that have distinct molecular characteristics and evolutionary processes,” Landi explains. “In the future – he adds – we may be able to have different treatments based on these subtypes”.

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The researchers assigned the three subtypes names inspired by music, referring to the level of noise, i.e. the amount of mutations that trigger them. Thus “slowly” corresponds to the largest group, which has so many mutations that it is difficult to treat and in which tumor formation occurs very slowly, over a period of years. The “half-strong” subtype has mutations in the Egfr gene, usually altered in many forms of lung cancer, and leads to a more rapid development of the disease. Finally, the “strong” subtype originates from a genetic mechanism more similar to that seen in the tumors of smokers and develops quickly. Based on these differences, it is now possible to calibrate diagnoses and therapies.

(Unioneonline/s.s.)

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