Lung cancer gene has gender bias.Of all cancers, lung cancer lung cancer, cancer that originates in the tissues of the lungs. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States in both men and women. Like other cancers, lung cancer occurs after repeated insults to the genetic material of the cell. causes the most deaths in the United States. Smoking leads to almost 90 percent of cases, but researchers have been unable to explain why among smokers, women seem to be 2 to 3 times as susceptible to the disease as men are. A new study may help explain this gender bender. A gene for a protein that promotes lung cancer growth is more likely to be active in women than in men, says Sharon P. Shriver shrive v. shrove or shrived, shriv·en or shrived, shriv·ing, shrives v.tr. 1. To hear the confession of and give absolution to (a penitent). 2. of Pennsylvania State University Pennsylvania State University, main campus at University Park, State College; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1855, opened 1859 as Farmers' High School. in State College. Known as gastrin-releasing peptide receptor The gastrin-releasing peptide receptor (GRPR) is a G protein-coupled receptor whose endogenous ligand is gastrin releasing peptide.[1] References 1. ^ Benya RV, Kusui T, Pradhan TK, Battey JF, Jensen RT (1995). , or GRPR GRPR gastrin-releasing peptide receptor GRPR Glass Road Public Relations GRPR Ginny Richardson Public Relations GRPR Graduate Research Progress Reports GRPR Global and Regional Program Review , the gene is not typically active in the lungs of nonsmokers, Shriver says. Tests of lung cancer cells, however, show that nicotine turns the gene on, she and her colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh report in the Jan. 5 JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE. The gene resides on the X chromosome X chromosome One of the two sex chromosomes (the other is Y) that determine a person's gender. Normal males have both an X and a Y chromosome, and normal females have two X chromosomes. . Therefore, women have twice as many copies of GRPR as men do and so are probably more susceptible to smoking's carcinogenic carcinogenic having a capacity for carcinogenesis. effects. Shriver and her colleagues looked at normal lung tissue that had been removed from 38 women and 40 men during surgery related to lung cancer or another lung disease. Among the nonsmokers, 55 percent of the women and none of the men had active copies of the gene. Among people who had smoked less than the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a day over 25 years, 75 percent of the women and 20 percent of the men had active GRPR copies, she says. In those who smoked more, about 70 percent of both men and women had an active GRPR in their lungs. The incidence of lung cancer was 12 times higher for women with an active GRPR gene than for women with inactive genes. It was only 2.4 times higher for men with the active gene than for men without it, Shriver says. If further work bears out her findings, she says, GRPR activity might predict which people are most likely to develop cancer. "This kind of early marker for lung cancer is something we don't have right now," she says. Lung cancer is deadly because doctors don't usually detect it until late in its course. |
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