"Smoking is bad for anyone's health. It is even worse for some, and today's discoveries continue to strengthen our ability to identify who those people are and give them a compelling additional reason to quit. We plan to incorporate these SNPs into our testing products to do that. What we do not yet know is exactly how this additional risk is conferred. To some degree these variants suggest that those for whom nicotine is more addictive are driven to smoke more, increasing their exposure to environmental risk. But given the quite substantial corresponding increases in risk of lung cancer it may also be that they make people more susceptible to the noxious effects of tobacco smoke. What is clear is that these variants - which are all near genes that encode nicotine metabolizing enzymes and receptors - are giving us a solid starting point for finding answers to advance personal and public health," said Kari Stefansson, executive chairman and president of research at deCODE and senior author on the paper.

SOURCE DeCODE Genetics Inc