Smoking deprives men of their Y chromosomes as they age, new research indicates. Scientists have always been aware that, as men age, the Y chromosome can begin to die out of some body cells. Originally this was considered to be a natural side effect of growing older.
Newer studies point to the fact that the “loss of Y” might not be so natural. In a study made available earlier this year, it appears that the decline in Y chromosome numbers might be actually connected to a high risk of developing death-causing cancer.
The latest study published yesterday in Science, adds to those results: It revealed that older men who smoke normally lose more Y chromosomes found in blood cells than non-smokers do. Since just men are the “bearers” of Y chromosome, these results may explain why cigarette smoking is a bigger trigger of cancerous tumors among males.
Smoking cigarettes is a threat element for several medical conditions, not simply lung tumor. Epidemiological information uncover that male cigarette smokers have really a higher “chance” of suffering from cancer in other parts of the body except the respiratory system compared to female cigarette smokers.
Specialists also discovered a link between smoking cigarettes and innate diseases among males that may depict this gender differences.
Lars Forsberg, a researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden who led the study, mentioned, however, that as there are many smokers who don’t develop cancer and many non-smokers who do, there are also smokers who will not lose Y chromosome and smokers that will do.
The group of scientists at the Uppsala University in Sweden found that more they smoke the more are men vulnerable to loss of Y chromosomes, which are imperative for sex determination and sperm.
Scientists have found that the loss of Y chromosomes might depend on the number of smoked cigarettes. The results likewise indicated that loss of Y chromosome because of smoking may be reversible as some men who had stopped smoking seemed to have recovered their Y chromosomes.
“These results demonstrate that smoking can result in loss of the Y chromosome and that this course may be reversible,” said Forsberg.
According to the results of the study the recurrence of cells with loss of the Y chromosome was not distinctive among ex-smokers compared to men who had never smoked. This disclosure could be exceptionally powerful for persuading smokers to stop.
With the American Cancer Society anticipating that lung cancer will “execute” about 160,000 individuals in the United States in 2014, this study demonstrates that quitting smoking is never too late.
