Research: Smoking Permanently Damages Your DNA read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/940-research-smoking-permanently-damages-your-dna

A study found that smoking can damage the DNA permanently. The study of 16,000 people found that Smoking leaves its “footprint” on the human genome in the form of DNA methylation.

Roby Joehanes of Hebrew SeniorLife and Harvard Medical School said, "Our study has found convincing evidence that smoking has a long-lasting impact on our molecular machinery, an impact that can last more than 30 years,”.

Cancer and Heart disease are both caused by genetic damage - some of it inherited, but most of it caused by day-to-day living. Smoking is one of the biggest culprits. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 40 million adults in the country smoked cigarettes.

Researchers added, “Equally important is our finding that even after someone stops smoking, we still see the effects of smoking on their DNA,”

Stephanie J. London, deputy chief of the Epidemiology Branch at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said “These results are important because methylation, as one of the mechanisms of the regulation of gene expression, affects what genes are turned on, which has implications for the development of smoking-related diseases,” in a statement.

Researchers compared the methylation sites in current and former smokers to those who had never smoked and found that nearly one-third of known human genes, or 7,000 genes, were altered due to smoking.

 

The research article on Smoking leaves historical “footprint” in DNA was published on American Heart Association website.