BALTIMORE, March 28 (UPI) -- Scientists at Maryland's Johns Hopkins University say they have identified the genetic mutations that trigger a hereditary form of fatal lung disease.
There is currently no effective treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which causes progressive scarring of the lungs. As many as 20 percent of IPF sufferers are thought to have inherited genetic mistakes that predispose them to the disease, the university said in a release ahead of the study's publication in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A DNA screening of 73 people with inherited IPF found that six of them had mutations in two genes that produce an enzyme which helps lengthen the fragile ends of chromosomes or telomeres.
Scientists say the finding may "provide new directions in diagnosis and treatment for families that inherit genes for the disease, as well as for those that develop non-inherited forms of the illness," the release said.
