Women and Lung Cancer
Thanks to Bernadine Healy, M.D. for her column "Hormones, Heart, and Cancer" [usnews.com].
This new data from The Women's Health Initiative adds urgency to the need for further study into the relationship between hormones and cancer, especially lung cancer. Lung cancer statistics should concern everyone: Lung cancer is now the leading cancer killer of women in the United States, claiming nearly twice as many lives as breast cancer. It further surprises many that nearly 20 percent of these deaths are in women who have never smoked. In fact, women who have never smoked are at greater risk for lung cancer than men who have never smoked and we don't yet know why. Research funding addressing the underlying role of hormones and other sex differences is desperately needed to advance lung cancer treatment for women, and men.
Joan Schiller, M.D.
President
National Lung Cancer Partnership
Dallas
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Smoking & Lung Cancer
Added to that, here's an excerpt from http://www.themesotheliomalibrary.com
"Data from the Feb. 10 2007 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology released show that lung cancer among non-smokers is more prevelant than originally thought, with women more at risk than men. The researchers used data sources that compiled over 1
million individuals between the ages of 40 to 79 from the United States and Sweden. What they found was startling. On average, 14.4 to 20.8 cases per 100,000 person-years were from never-smoking women. The data was a bit more promising for men with only 4.8 to 13.7 cases per 100,000 person years. However, this is alot less for current smokers who contract cancer at rates 10 to 30 times these numbers.
This study gives an indication that if we take the whole population of the United States roughly 8 percent of lung cancer cases in males and 20 percent of cases in females are from people who never smoked.
However, this study does not determine the reasons why women are more likely to be diagnosied with lung cancer even if they are not smokers. A reason proposed is that men are more likely to smoke, therefore secondhand smoke exposure could be more prevalent among women who are companions of those men. Furthermore, there are other potential links to why lung cancer occurs in never-smokers in general. These include environmental pollutants, occupational exposures including asbestos, chromium, arsenic, and radon."
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