“Why is smoking somehow related to your genes?”
I was taking a class, and there's a statistic that says children are three times likely to smoke cigarettes if their parents smoked cigarettes. At first, I thought this because they would learn it from their environment, whatever, but apparently it's because of a supposed hereditary connection? How is a smoking/nicotine addiction related to your genes?
1 Answer
There are no strong evidences yet on the genetic predisposition to cigarette smoking, however, it has been proven that cigarette smoke has mutagenic effect on the DNA and can influence the expression of certain genes via epigenetic modifications. It has also been proven that certain epigenetic modifications can be inheritable. Therefore, it is plausible that smoking cigarettes can cause genetic and epigenetic changes that will increase the predisposition to smoke in the next generation.
Luigi Boccuto, MD
Luigi Boccuto, MD
