Genetics and lung cancer

Genetics has become a very important field in the medical domain during the last few years. Since the human DNA structure was discovered more and more information about our body started to gather.

Genetic diagnosing and therapy is intense studied in many laboratories from the world. Scientists are trying to find a cure for diseases that seem to have no promising solutions with the classical therapies. Lung cancer is such an affection that can not be completely treated in a lot of patients and has got no cure. Genetic specialists seem to have discovered a way of diagnosing lung cancer in its early stage when treatment can still help a lot the patient and save his life.

In 2007 at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer conference a new genetic finding was presented by a group of researchers from Amsterdam. It seems that analyzing genetically the sputum from patients who have lung cancer can reveal genetic markers. These markers can then be used as a complementary method for detecting lung cancer in early stages in people who do not know to have lung cancer.

The classical methods of detecting lung cancer are the chest X-ray, the CT scan and the bronchoscopy. Bronchoscopy is quite effective but it has some disadvantages as it can not be implemented to all the patients, it can lead to infections, pain, anxiety and sometimes not all medical centers can afford to perform one.

The researchers from Amsterdam tested the sputum from 103 patients diagnosed with lung cancer and 102 patients known not to have lung cancer. Most of the patients tested had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A special molecular marker called Methylation marker was taken from two genes and tested on the sputum of the trial participants. The conclusions were that the Methylation markers detected 50% of the lung cancers. This proves it has some sensitivity to the lung cancer. In 95% of the non-cancerous abnormalities the markers were accurate. This could mean that bronchoscopy and further tests could be reduced from using if these markers prove to work. A lot of studies still need to be done before adopting the sputum genetic test in clinics.

Other genetic specialists discovered a gene that clearly gave them indications of which smoker had stage I lung cancer and which did not have cancer. These scientists took bronchoscopy samples from 77 smokers who had stage I cancer and made a comparison with the gene profiles called the Affymetrix HG-U133A microarray. This device holds information of 14, 500 human genes. The conclusion of the test was accurate 90%. Afterwards scientists took samples from 87 patients suspected of lung cancer. Again, the results were accurate in 90% of the cases.

The conclusions of the scientists was that by looking for particular changes in the genes of cells taken from the large airways even though at a simple look those cells might look normal, stage I of cancer might be detected.

It is true that these tests have not yet been implemented in hospitals for their daily use as they are not completely finished, but we can expect at any time to find out that these tests were approved by FDA and that they can be used to all people suspected of lung cancer.

Because genetics can play such a large role in your health, it is always good to know your lineage. If you’ve lost track of relatives or are researching genealogy try and online people finder to help you in your search. Specialized search engines can help you find anyone.