Why do some people get lung cancer without a history of smoking?

Why do some people get lung cancer without a history of smoking?

Lung cancer is associated with smoking more than any other factor, but not all people with this disease are smokers.

Smoking is still the most important risk factor for lung cancer, and about 85% of cases of this disease in the world are related to smoking, however, according to estimates, about 20% of lung cancer patients have never smoked.

This issue has been one of the important research questions about this disease for years, and now a comprehensive study, the results of which were published in the scientific journal "Science", has identified a genetic factor that can significantly increase the risk of lung cancer in a small part of these people.

This study was conducted by researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the 23andMe Research Institute, and examined the genetic information of more than 3.3 million people.

Researchers have discovered a rare genetic mutation in a gene called EGFR that is associated with a significantly increased risk of lung cancer. This mutation has been linked to a 25-fold increase in the risk of lung cancer.

But the more impressive finding is related to people who have never smoked. Among them, the possibility of lung cancer in carriers of this mutation is more than 60 times that of people who do not have this genetic change.

Among smokers, carriers of this mutation were about 10 times more likely to develop lung cancer.

Of course, these numbers do not mean that a large proportion of non-smokers have such a risk. This mutation is very rare, and researchers have put its abundance in the American population at about one in 15,000 people.

Read the full report on the Radio Farda website.