Honoured for work on Maori smoking

Studying nicotine-addicted northern Hawke's Bay Maori has helped Rod Lea become runner-up in the MacDairmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards.
Dr Lea, who picked up a travel grant and runner-up award in Auckland on Wednesday, based his research on a sample of smokers from Te Iwi o Rakaipaaka, from Nuhaka. T
hey were studied alongside a comparative group of European smokers from Hawke's Bay to find out if there were genetic and related biomedical reasons why Maori were more likely to smoke and to suffer from serious diseases.
Te Iwi O Rakaipaaka Inc manager Johnina Symes said by examining the iwi's ancestral history the study had the potential to enhance understanding of health risks for Maori, and ensure health services could be targeted for best effect.
It had been well supported.
"Even our men, who are usually pretty standoffish when it comes to medical checks, are lining up to take part. That's because so many of our people have died from, and continue to suffer from, serious illnesses and we want to find ways to turn that around and protect future generations."
The smoking study forms part of a much larger iwi-based study called the Rakaipaaka Health and Ancestry Study, which will incorporate whakapapa knowledge to understand the genetics of disease in Maori.
Dr Lea grew up in Australia but has Ngati Rakaipaaka connections through marriage. He now lives in Wellington.
His research is supported by ESR (Environmental Science and Research), the National Heart Foundation, the Wellington and Hawke's Bay Medical Research Foundations and the Cancer Society of New Zealand.
Dr Lea's research centres on a liver enzyme called CYP2A6, which is responsible for removing up to 90 percent of nicotine from the body.
Testing the enzyme provides information about differences in nicotine metabolism that could explain why some people become addicted, their ability to give up and the risk of them developing smoking-related diseases such as cancer.
A simple saliva test has been developed to measure a person's genetic and metabolic profile, opening the way for higher quit rates among smokers, by personalising stop-smoking therapies. Dr Lea's research also focuses on disease susceptibility genes among indigenous groups around the world, in particular the effect of the CYP2A6 gene in the Maori population, which has one of the highest smoking rates in the world.
The MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards are organised by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology and sponsored by Fisher & Paykel Appliances.
Dr Lea was also first equal in the Advancing Human Health category, which is sponsored by the Health Research Council of New Zealand.