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One SNP linked to two diseases—addiction and cancer: A Double Whammy?: Nicotine addiction and lung cancer susceptibility

Molecular Psychiatry volume 13, pages 990–992 (2008)Cite this article

A new genome-wide association study provides compelling evidence that a polymorphic variation linked to a nicotinic receptor subunit cluster contributes to increased risk of becoming addicted to nicotine—presumably through the expression of these receptors in brain regions implicated in reward—and of suffering from lung cancer through the expression of these receptors in epithelial cells in the lung.

Almost 90 years ago, James Ewing (1866–1943), a physician founder of the American Cancer Society, proposed that heredity is likely to contribute to the etiology of cancer through the indirect transmission of enhanced liability.1 It took us many decades to fully grasp the meaning of this concept, which encompasses not only the primary role of oncogenic genes, but also a much broader set of interacting genetic, environmental and behavioral processes. It is hard to imagine a better example of Ewing's ‘enhance liability factor’ than the case of a single-nucleotide polymorphism working at the crossroads between facilitating behaviors conducive to nicotine dependence and creating a permissive environment for the development of lung cancer. Yet, this is precisely the conclusion we are invited to draw from a recent report2 that illustrates the ability of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to detect genetic contributions that increase not only the risk of complex bio-behavioral disorders such as addiction, but also the risk of cancer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Office of the Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    N Volkow

  2. Division of Basic Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    J Rutter, J D Pollock & D Shurtleff

  3. Office of Science Policy and Communications, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    R Baler

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  1. N Volkow
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Correspondence to N Volkow.

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Volkow, N., Rutter, J., Pollock, J. et al. One SNP linked to two diseases—addiction and cancer: A Double Whammy?: Nicotine addiction and lung cancer susceptibility. Mol Psychiatry 13, 990–992 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2008.71

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