Researchers Believe Long-Living Smokers Owe Longevity to Distinct Gene Variant

Condemned by the Surgeon General and a multitude of studies, it’s no secret that smoking is bad for your health. However, there appear to be some individuals who remain completely unaffected by the countless number of smoking-related side effects. Take Zhang Shunqing for example, who, as of 2007 was 100 years old and had outlived his daughter, but had started smoking and drinking brown liquor at the age of 20. There are numerous cases describing people who appear to ignore all doctor-recommended lifestyle choices and still tend to outlive their much more health-conscious counterparts.  

While there have been some recent studies that have looked at lifestyle choices and longevity, a study published this summer in The Journals of Gerontology believes this is due to a specific genetic variant that allows a “biologically distinct group” to respond differently to the adverse effects of tobacco. Researchers compared 90 participants who were smokers and lived past 80 and 730 smokers who lived to be less than 70. The 80-plus group was found to have similar physiological functions to non-smokers in their age group, while those who died under the age of 70 were found to have had a worse physiological function at the time they were tested. 

Though the test group was small, these researchers were able to develop a genetic risk score for smokers, and report they were not only able to predict an individual’s likelihood of living to old age, but also their risk of cancer. 

Morgan Levine, a post-doctoral fellow in human genetics and biostatistics at the University of California-Los Angeles, and one of the co-authors of the paper is currently collaborating with other researchers at the University of Southern California’s Davis School of Gerontology to develop a test to assess their health risks based on blood tests and genetics, but he cautions in an article in The Washington Post that the “proportion of people who have a ‘genetic signature’ that would help them cope with the biological stresses of smoking is extremely small, and therefore, nobody should use this paper as an excuse to continue smoking.”