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Simple urine test may predict likelihood of lung cancer
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A new urine test appears to help determine which smokers are likely to develop lung cancer .jpg)
and which aren't. Although we know that lung cancer and other health risks are related to smoking, it's never before been clear why some smokersdevelop the disease and others don't.
Now as the result of a study of 500 men and women in Shanghai and Singapore, Dr. Jian-Min Yuan and other researchers from the University of Minnesota, using a simple urine test, were able to discover a link between the level of a specific carcinogen and lung cancer. There's nearly 60 carcinogens in tobacco smoke, but one carcinogen in particular, known as NNK is released into your body when you inhale smoke. It passes through the liver, gets metabolized and releases NNAL, a byproduct or metabolite of NNK, into the bloodstream.
If you have high levels of NNAL and high levels of nicotine (equivalent to smoking about a pack of cigarettes a day), you're 8.5 times more likely to develop lung cancer than a smoker with lower levels of NNAL. According to Yuan, “If we can identify a smoker with a high level of metabolites, and down the road they have a higher risk of lung cancer, public health workers can get them motivated to quit smoking.”
When asked what he thought about the study, Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society said, "I think the big story here is that they were able to find a relationship between the more carcinogen a person has in their body and the more risk they have of developing lung cancer. So the more you smoke, the higher your risk."
The urine test isn't available to doctors yet, and probably won't be for another three to five years while researchers validate it around the world among other ethnic groups.
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