Smoking gene protects against cocaine addiction

摘要

It may be a small consolation, but a mutation in a gene that makes you more likely to smoke also offers some protection against cocaine dependence.rnAn earlier study showed that people with two copies of a mutation in the CHRNA5 gene are twice as likely to become heavy smokers. The assumption was that genes forrnnicotine addiction would also increase the risk of addiction to other drugs. "Most cocaine users are also smokers, so we expected the same gene to increase the risk for both," says Rick Grucza of Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri. But when his team scanned the genes of 260 cocaine addicts and 244 non-addicts, they found that only 48 per cent of addicts had at least one copy of the CHRNA5 mutation compared to 64 per cent of the non-addicts.