Does heroin use alter your DNA?

It is completely incorrect.

Nothing, save mutation or exposure to radiation, can change your DNA on a significant level.

I think.

Yep, incorrect.
From what I’ve read it can alter your body permanently, affecting the immune system and your central nervous system… but as for the DNA I couldn’t find anything.

Nothing can alter your DNA. Absolutely nothing. Mutagens and some toxins or types of viruses can cause errors in DNA or RNA replication, but it cannot be fundamentally altered in any way.

Well so far I’ve found this which actually seems to support the fact that some drugs cause mutations in your DNA… but it’s just a message board post. I’d like to find something legitimate.

This is what happens when you don’t bother teaching biology in schools.

i heard that radioactive spider bits can alter your DNA.

@jballou. Wrong. Many, many things can directly alter your DNA, permanently. Aging and the development of cancers are but two examples of phenotypic effects resulting directly from genotypic changes (i.e. permanent mutations).

As far as whether heroin permanently alters your DNA, I think that is highly unlikely. Morphine (heroin) can change the expression of genes, but this effect is transient.

Seems to be a growing supposition that many things may alter your DNA, including smoking.

@jvgr. It isn’t supposition. Many things do alter your DNA. As far as smoking goes, there is a laundry list of carcinogens (read: DNA altering toxins) in cigarette smoke. Lung cancer in a smoker is primarily due to the lifetime accumulation of DNA damage, leading to unrestrained and aberrant growth of tumor cells.

If it does alter DNA, you will probably see mutants living with us now.

mea05key, you wouldn’t know a mutant if you saw one (assuming we are just talking about people with mutated DNA). This isn’t a comic book.

@bodyhead

i am just assuming dna changes will affect people physically.

Many DNA mutations are silent because they don’t affect the coding sequence or regulation of a protein. Moreover, it often takes multiple mutations to cause a phenotypic difference. And lastly, since humans are diploid, in order for a gene to be truly affected, mutations have to occur in both copies of the gene (on both chromosomes). That is why it takes a long time (in general) to develop cancer, since having two copies of a gene allows us to survive (relatively) normally if one copy is mutated.

I think maybe we’re just arguing semantics. I wasn’t saying that DNA can’t be changed at all- I’m saying it’s not the DNA itself that is directly altered, but rather it’s an error introduced into the DNA’s replication resulting in mutated DNA.

and @mea05key – There are all types of mutants around us every day and they are affected physically- red hair, green eyes, etc. Mutation does not mean deformity.

@ jaballou

i nvr say that mutation is a kind of deformity. I was saying it changes people physically but i dont consider that as a deformity.

@ivgr,
“Seems to be a growing supposition that many things may alter your DNA, including smoking.”

Actually, nicotine is a powerful mutagen, which is why exposure to it causes cancer. The term “mutation” is not limited to things that get passed along genetically to your offspring. It can refer to a cell line whose damaged chromosomes can no longer regulate growth in its daughter cells.

So, any substance known to cause cancer or birth defects does so by damaging your DNA.

@Montezuma. Can you provide evidence for your statement, “nicotine is a powerful mutagen”? I know of no such data. Tar, and radon, in cigarettes are mutagenic, but the nicotine is not, as far as I know. You could probably chew nicotine gum forever with no problems…

@shilolo I thought this was pretty well established. There are over 300,000 hits on nicotine carcinogen in Google.

http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/79/1/1
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:8rLhCyQYTpUJ:www.smoke-free.ca/factsheets/pdf/TSNAfactsheet.PDF+nicotine+carcinogen&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us

Um. No, it is not well established. Nicotine, alone, has NOT been shown to be mutagenic. If you actually read the first article you cited, it states “Although a great deal of work has been carried out on the mutagenicity of the common PAHs found in cigarettes, only a few studies have addressed the genotoxic nature of nicotine itself.” Mainly, nicotine binds to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors to mediate its physiologic effects. There are scattered reports suggesting that nicotine might be carcinogenic, but the studies are faulty, and there are no clear cut molecular mechanisms to tie nicotine to cancer. So, in summary, nicotine has not been proven to be a carcinogen. You can see here in a university carcinogen database that there is no evidence in rats for its carcinogenic potential.

I would add that there are ~300K hits mainly because in many articles, you’ll find nicotine and carcinogen co-cited, not because they are linked.

You are correct, but we truly are picking a semantic nit here. When is nicotine ever alone? Certainly not in cigarette smoke, which is an instance where smoking something can alter your DNA. One of the articles I cited shows it to be a mutagenic promoter, which is to say, it is in the causal chain, even it requires another compound or two to do its damage.

Anyone who says they are absolutely sure that it doesnt alter DNA is ignorant! First off brand new studies published within the past month have shown that the carcinogens in smoke of any kind even those from just one cigarette can damage the genetic codes in DNA enough to be linked to thousands of deaths throughout the world that were previously thought to be the result of other causes. heroin smoke is horrible for your lungs! That doesnt change because you think your smart and know what your talking about. When I smoke black I notice the adverse effects greatly even as little as one hit off of a foil can give me a wheeze. You dumbasses arent scientists despite the fact that you think you’re one in the little fantasy world you live in where smoke is healthy for you!

What about babies can heroin recovers have normal babies? Or can the heroin used in the past affect their future babies?