Geneplanet blog

Lung cancer is the leading cause of death among all cancers. The main players in lung cancer development are harmful environmental influences with smoking being the number one (90% of this disease cases is linked to smoking). According to the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, lung cancer is responsible for 5% of deaths annually. There are different forms of lung cancer, differentiated according to the cancer cell sizes. The outcome of the disease depends on the cell type and cancer stage. Lung cancer presents with various signs and symptoms, the most common ones being cough, dyspnoea and unexplained loss of weight.

There are many risk factors leading to the development of lung cancer, but cigarette smoking is an absolute number one. 90% of all lung cancers are associated with smoking. The risk increases with the number of packs smoked per day. A smoker who smokes one pack a day runs a 25-fold increase in risk for cancer development compared to a non-smoker. The cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 substances, among them substances that induce the development of cancer, the so called carcinogenic substances. Besides active smoking, passive smoking is also a risk factor. Passive smoking means that a person does not smoke himself/herself, but rather inhales the cigarette smoke of the smokers in his/her vicinity.

The risk factors further include some other toxic substances in the air that we breathe, such as for instances asbestos fibres. Asbestos is a material which had long been used for heating and sound insulation of houses. Those who got sick were mainly the workers in the asbestos industry. The remaining risk factors include the exposure to the radioactive radon gas (which can ooze out of the poor-quality construction material of some houses), other pulmonary diseases in the patient’s past medical history and the general environmental air pollution.

Why should you have your DNA analysed for predisposition to lung cancer?

By checking your genome we can discover variants of your genes which play key roles in protecting your lungs from cancer development.

More about genetic testing for lung cancer.