Smokers who learn their personal risk of lung cancer through gene-based risk assessment are more likely to be motivated to quit their habit, according to Dr. W. Jeffrey Allard, clinical affairs director of Synergenz Bioscience Ltd.
The RespirageneTM test, which uses genetic markers and clinical variables to tell smokers their risk of developing lung cancer compared with other smokers, can help counter a tendency to underestimate their personal risk of smoking complications, he told a conference on smoking cessation today.
An increasing amount of evidence shows that smokers respond to “personalized” risk information with higher quit rates, said Allard, a featured speaker at the 3rd Smoking Cessation Conference in Philadelphia.
“Many current smokers suffer from ‘optimistic bias,’ the belief that while smoking is bad for them, the illness and early death that come with it affects other smokers, not them,” he said.
“But at the same time, when offered the chance to find out where they actually stand, studies also show that smokers are very interested in learning their own risk levels, and in many cases take this personal information as a trigger to prompt them to quit,” he said, citing an extensive review article on the topic soon to be published in Postgraduate Medical Journal.
Allard said quit rates were highest where smokers had suffered, or appeared to be at immediate risk of, life-threatening complications caused by smoking. Lung cancer, heart attack and emphysema are particularly important in this regard.
A brush with serious illness increases the likelihood of quitting: quit rates after a life-threatening event such as a heart attack or lung cancer are as high as 50 to 60 percent.
But by the time many smoking-related diseases appear, the consequences are usually serious and often fatal: lung function loss and related damage associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), or emphysema, is generally irreversible; heart attacks can be killers; and a diagnosis of lung cancer means death within one year for 50 percent of those diagnosed, and death within two years for 80 percent.
However, the predictive personal information based on genetics can communicate individual risk before serious illness emerges, so it can be a valuable tool for doctors to help them identify those at higher risk for targeted efforts at help with smoking cessation and closer monitoring for possible smoking-related illness, said Allard.
Dr Allard’s company, Synergenz, has partnered with PHD Diagnostics LLC to market Respiragene™, a genetic-based lung cancer susceptibility test developed by PHD’s clinical lab division, Molecular Diagnostics Laboratories (MDL), specifically for use in the US. MDL, which is a CLIA-registered, specialist lab with molecular diagnostics development expertise, launched the test earlier this month.
The Respiragene™ test combines genetic and non-genetic factors to generate a score showing an individual’s risk of lung cancer compared with the average smoker. An average smoker is already 20 to 30 times more likely to develop lung cancer than non-smokers, and about one in 10 will develop lung cancer.