Lung cancer is the deadliest disease and still is the most common cause of death. This is the obvious fact that smoking is the major cause of lung cancer but 10%-20% of lung cancer cases are non-smokers or smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime.
There are two main types of lung cancer i.e., small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); where NSCLC is more common as most of the lung cancer patients are diagnosed with NSCLC.
At the Francis Crick Institute (FCI) and University College London (UCL) team of researchers found that the NSCLC developed on non-smokers mostly who lived in air polluted areas where air pollution levels exceeded WHO guidelines.
This has been a fact from at least two decades that air pollution is the second most common cause of lung cancer, but in this this research scientists found small pollutant particles in the air cause lung cancer that previously not identified.
The researchers collected health data of 463,679 people from England, South Korea, and Taiwan; and found that exposure to PM2.5 pollution is linked with global lung cancer risk in nonsmokers. They also test over mice and found that air pollution increase the number, size, and grade of with pre-existing mutations in EGFR and KRAS genes. This also found that pollution is not simply relate to lung cancer but may actually cause it.
The researchers tried to understand how air pollution causes lung cancer without causing DNA mutation. They found that air pollution exposure in both mice and humans results in an inflammatory response involving interleukin-1beta (IL1B) that transforms lung epithelial cells into a progenitor stem cell state. If the EGFR or KRAS mutation in stem cell that increase the risk of a Tumor being triggered.
The information shared in this blog is for educational purposes only.
Subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Twitter or Facebook today and never miss an update!