PHILADELPHIA — Children exposed to secondhand cigarette smoke have an increased risk of developing lung cancer in adulthood, even if they never smoked.

Results of this study are published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, as part of a special tobacco focus in the December issue.

This year alone, more than 219,000 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer; more than 159,000 will die from it and some of those may be people who have never smoked. Studies to date have shown that exposure to secondhand smoke in adulthood has detrimental health effects, but data are limited on one’s risk of developing lung cancer when exposed as a child.

What makes this study different from previous research is that it was conducted in two independent cohorts and included a molecular analysis of gene variants of innate immunity — the mannose binding lection-2 gene, or MBL2 gene. The MBL2 gene is known to affect susceptibility to respiratory diseases….. (more…)