We all know that smoking can cause cancer, but now there actually might be a way to predict which smokers will eventually develop lung cancer. According to Reuters, “Researchers have identified a group of genes that are especially active in lung cancer patients– even in healthy tissue… The main gene is called PI3K and it affects a pathway of other genes.” Also, this gene is in the windpipes of smokers, which means that patients do not need any more dangerous and uncomfortable lung tests.
These cells have been referred to as “a window into the lung,” by researcher Andrea Bild, because they can detect whether or not a smoker is on the way to developing lung cancer. Reuters reports that cigarette smoke causes 90 percent of all cases of lung cancer, which kills 1.2 million people a year. A lot of the time symptoms of lung cancer can go unnoticed; which makes lung cancer very deadly because a majority of patients aren’t diagnosed until it is untreatable due to how much it has spread.
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