Overview of Gene Therapy against Smoking

Gene therapy is yet a new method to help smokers quit from smoking. Such therapy is utilizing the basic building blocks of the human body, in order to put an end to the smoking habit.

We all know about the harmful effects of smoking to health -- both to smokers and the people around them. Despite this reality, people still carry on smoking to the extent of making it a daily habit. Nevertheless, there are also many who have realized that what they are doing is purely destruction to both health and the environment. Well, smoking is also a culprit to air pollution.

Introducing Gene Therapy

Because of the reality that quitting smoking is quite a difficult task to fulfill, quitters need to be supported. In line with offering assistance to quitters, medical science has created a lot of contemporary medications and methods to be used as supplementary tools to aid quitters succeed in their goal to stop smoking. The choice is up to the quitter, though.

One of the newly created quit smoking methods offered by medical science is the gene therapy. It is a kind of therapy that utilizes and works on genes that are associated and directly affected with the smoking habit, likewise the genes that battle against certain illness or habit.

Basing on a research conducted in the U.S., smokers who have two gene distinctions find ‘quit smoking’ a simple task to accomplish. This is contrary to what the majority have experienced.

These two gene distinctions amend the brain's neurotransmitter dopamine functionality. What makes quit smoking easier for these types of smoker is the correlation between the two genes namely the SLC6A3 and the alternate DRD2. The first genes referred to as dopamine transporter genes and the latter is a dopamine receptor gene.