Ignacio J. Molina Pineda
Professor of Immunology
The article by Saint-André et al. demonstrates that smoking substantially alters both the non-specific and specific immune response. Remarkably, while the alterations in the non-specific response are reversed after cessation of smoking and thus return to normal, the significant changes observed in the specific response are maintained for years after cessation of smoking. The authors further demonstrate that these changes are the consequence of smoking-induced modifications in the regulatory mechanisms of important immune system genes, and if smoking similarly affects the regulation of genes other than those studied, this could explain why smoking is such an important risk factor in the development of tumours in organs other than the lung.
This is a high quality work carried out with scientific rigour and the results obtained are of great medical relevance. However, as the large study population was deliberately homogeneous, it remains to be seen whether these findings would also be found in other people with different racial profiles to the selected cohort.