Smoking and the breast cancer risk gene BRCA2 combine to ‘enormously’; increase the chance of developing lung cancer. [s]BBC News[/s] reports that this is according to a study of 27,000 people by a team at the [b]Institute of Cancer Research[/b] in [b]London[/b], which found the gene could double the likelihood of getting lung cancer. Smokers have 40 times the chance of developing lung cancer, but those with a BRCA2 mutation were nearly 80 times more likely, the analysis showed. ‘It is a massive increase in risk…’Professor Richard Houlston. ‘There is a subset of the population who are at very significant risk.
[link url=http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27634006]Full BBC News report[/link]
[link url=http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3002.html]Nature Genetics letter[/link]