Passive smoking affects the child’s DNA, causing epigenetic changes that can be associated with diseases such as asthma and cancer.
The study of the Barcelona Institute of Global Health analyzed the data of 2695 children from eight European countries: Spain, France, Greece, Lithuania, Norway, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden. Participants were children aged 7-10 years old, who were volunteers from six cohort of the consortium of the epigenetics of pregnancy and childhood (Pace).
Using the blood samples of participants, the research group studied the methylation level in certain areas of DNA throughout the genome and correlated it with the number of smokers in the family (0, 1 or 2 or more). DNA methylation was changed in 11 areas, which was associated with the influence of passive smoking. Most of these areas were also associated with direct exposure to tobacco smoke in active smokers or during pregnancy. Six of them had a relationship with diseases for which smoking is a risk factor such as asthma and cancer.
Researchers came to the conclusion that children who are subject to passive smoking at home more often show certain changes in the epigenoma that can change the activity of genes. These epigenetic changes, as the results showed, affect the development of diseases in the future.
One of the authors of Marta’s research, Kozin-Tomas notes that their work is not a call to the individual responsibility of families: the influence of tobacco smoke is a problem of public healthcare that hides issues of social inequality. Socio-economic and environmental factors, as well as the influence of major commercial interests, complicate the decrease in the impact of passive smoking in some families.