Theragenomic Medicine: Where there is a cigarette, there is smoke. How much, that may be in your genes.

Last Updated on August 15, 2015 by Joseph Gut – thasso

August 15, 2015 – Please find here the abstract of an recent article which is concerned with the genetic basis of smoking and the prospects of smoking cessation therapies in individual smokers.  The author of this blog thought it worthwhile to make this abstract and its associated study available to the readers of thasso post. For one, the article itself is freely available as an open access article from the Journal of Pharmacogenomics and Pharmaproteomics here. Moreover, the article is readable and understandable for everyone (i.e. lay persons, affected individuals, treating physicians, and caregivers alike), and addresses an issue central to this blog: Is there a genetic basis for disease etiology, for human behavior, and/or response to according therapy, and could genomic methods help to customize therapies for the affected.

Accordingly, in the present case, the discussion is about suspected or real individual genetic backgrounds when it comes to smoking, smoking behavior, and the prospects of smoking cessation therapies. So, please read the study abstract and then move forward to seeing the whole article here.

Study Abstract cited:

“Tobacco-related diseases place a tremendous burden on health-care systems world-wide. Overall mortality for smokers is nearly three-fold higher than for similar non-smokers. This increased mortality results from higher rates of cancers, vascular disease or respiratory disease. Great strides have been made in recent years with regards to understanding the neurophysiologic pathways of nicotine addiction. While a number of pharmacologic interventions have been developed to aid patients in smoking cessation, overall success rates for long-term smoking abstinence remain disappointingly low.

A growing body of evidence suggests that a number of genetic factors might influence both the severity of an individual’s nicotine addiction as well as the potential efficacy of various treatment modalities they might employ. The neurophysiology of nicotine addiction will be discussed along with genetic variants that can impact both nicotine pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics. The role that genetic variation plays in altering the efficacy of various smoking-cessation therapies will also be reviewed along with the potential therapeutic and economic benefits of utilizing genetic testing to optimize such drug therapies.”

Sounds pretty exciting, doesn’t it? Again, you find the whole article here; build up your own opinion after reading it. Overall, you might be less in control of your smoking habits than you always thought and maybe your are sort of innocent of your failures, if any.  All might be in the genes, and those you have inherited.