WHO Bulletin

FRESH DANGERS OF SMOKING FOR TEENAGERS

Smokers who start as young as age 15 may face a greater risk of lung damage than those who start after age 20, even if they subsequently quit. A small study of former smokers with lung cancer found that tobacco DNA adducts, which may be involved in carcinogenesis, were twice as common in the non-tumorous lung tissue of those who started at age 15 as in those who started at age 20 or later.

Younger smokers' lung tissue may be more vulnerable to damage, say the authors of the study, from the University of California, San Francisco and other institutions. Importantly, current smokers' adduct levels were linked more closely to the daily number of cigarettes smoked than to the age of starting. The researchers say current and former smokers should be assessed separately if DNA adduct levels are to be tested as a predictor of cancer risk (1).

Reference

1. Wiencke, J. et al. Early age at smoking initiation and tobacco carcinogen DNA damage in the lung. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 91: 614–619.

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