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Nicotinic Receptor Gene Variants Influence Susceptibility to Heavy Smoking

2008; American Association for Cancer Research; Volume: 17; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1158/1055-9965.epi-08-0585

1538-7755

Victoria L. Stevens, Laura J. Bierut, Jeffrey T. Talbot, Jen C. Wang, Juzhong Sun, Anthony L. Hinrichs, Michael J. Thun, Alison Goate, Eugenia E. Calle,

Biochemical Analysis and Sensing Techniques

Heavy smoking is a strong predictor of nicotine dependence, which is a major impediment to smoking cessation. Although both heavy smoking and nicotine dependence are highly heritable, previous attempts to identify genes influencing these phenotypes have been largely unsuccessful until very recently. We studied 1,452 heavy smokers (defined as smoking at least 30 cigarettes per day for at least 5 years) and 1,395 light smokers (defined as smoking 2-fold. Our findings identify two loci in the CHRNA5-CHRNA3-CHRNB4 gene cluster that predict smoking behavior and provide strong evidence for the involvement of the alpha5 nicotinic receptor in heavy smoking.