These overlapping genetic findings for nicotine dependence, lung cancer, and COPD demonstrate that genetic research on smoking is very important to medical research. Though smoking contributes to many illnesses, such as heart disease, hypertension, and stroke, the clearest genetic convergence is with smoking, lung cancer, and COPD. There have been questions about whether smoking should be a priority for genomic research from the perspective of public health [38-41], it is now clear that the strongest genetic determinants of lung cancer risk and COPD are the underlying genetic risk variants for nicotine addiction. Further insights into the genetic basis of nicotine dependence and smoking thus have strong potential to inform ongoing studies of lung disease and COPD and improve our ability to help smokers quit.
