Epithelial cells, localized on the inner side of human nose, are observed to acquire the genetic trades, similar to people living with the lung cancer and therefore can be considered of high importance to detect the lung cancer by simply picking a patient’s nose, claimed a recent study revealed during the American Thoracic Society conference in Denver, on Sunday.

During the course of the study, the researchers carefully examined the cells sampled from the inner side of the nose of around 33 smokers, suspects of lung cancer, and profiled them on microarrays, a process that allows to study alterations in the gene expression. The specimen study had acknowledged 11 patients at the initial stages of the disease while diagnosed rest 22 with the lung cancer.

In addition, the epithelial cell analysis had exposed 170 different genes with different levels of activity.

The study author, Christina Anderlind, an Instructor of medicine at Boston University Medical Centre, explained the study findings and said: "Our data suggests that evaluating gene expression changes in nasal cells found in the interior surface of the nose may serve as a non-invasive approach for the early detection of lung cancer in smokers”.

The lung cancer is a major cause of cancer-related deaths. Therefore the recent findings can be considered as a hope to acknowledge the disease at initial stages.