Exposure to increased neighborhood violence may change the glucocorticoid receptor for the stress hormone cortisol and influence the aggressiveness of lung cancer, according to new findings presented by Heath et al at the Endocrine Society’s Annual Meeting & Exposition 2024.
Study Methods and Results
In the new study, investigators collected lung tumor and healthy lung tissue samples from 15 Black and non-Black patients residing in Chicago. They used residential zip codes and police record data to determine which patients were living in neighborhoods with high, medium, and low levels of violent crime. They then performed the Cleavage Under Targets & Release Using Nuclease (CUT&RUN) test to pinpoint regions of the DNA that glucocorticoid receptors bind to and examined how these receptors may impact gene expression that regulates the aggressiveness of lung tumor growth. The investigators noted that Black men were more likely to live in neighborhoods with high levels of violent crime and have higher levels of cortisol in their hair.
“We found that genes correlated with exposure to neighborhood violence were associated with pathways involved in cortisol signaling and increased tumor aggressiveness,” indicated study author Hannah Heath, BS, a graduate research assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “When we looked at the spatial expression of these cortisol-signaling and tumor-aggressiveness genes, we found regions within tumor samples from high-violence neighborhoods that had elevated expression of these genes,” she added.
The investigators didn’t find these regions among patients with lung tumors who resided in low-violence neighborhoods. Further, exposure to neighborhood violence led to the glucocorticoid receptor binding in regions of the DNA that promoted more aggressive lung tumors—areas to which it doesn’t typically bind.
Conclusions
“We hope this research will lead to larger studies that will ultimately be used to guide the addition of the neighborhood environment as a lung cancer screening eligibility parameter. Currently, these parameters heavily focus on smoking habits. However, because Black men smoke less, they are often not eligible for screening—resulting in Black men being screened less and diagnosed later than White men,” stressed Ms. Heath. “This research uncovers a previously unknown link between exposure to neighborhood violence, [glucocorticoid receptors], and lung tumor aggressiveness that can help us understand and fix the lung cancer health disparity seen in Black men,” she concluded.