Lung Cancer and Women: A Mysterious Link
March 7, 2006 — -- Dana Reeve's passing from lung cancer highlights a grim but important fact about the disease: It is a common and lethal attacker of women, even among those who have never smoked.
Of the approximately 20,000 to 25,000 nonsmokers diagnosed with lung cancer in the United States each year, a greater proportion of them are women, according to Women Against Lung Cancer.
Unfortunately, the five-year survival rate remains relatively low. Only about 15 percent of people diagnosed survive five years or more. Breast cancer has an 88-percent survival rate, according to the Lung Cancer Alliance.
Why does this discrepancy persist?
Part of it is because lung cancer has no early warning signs and is usually diagnosed after the cancer has spread. Even then, it causes still somewhat hard-to-diagnose symptoms like a chronic cough, hoarseness, wheezing and chest pain, experts say. Reeve, who said she had never smoked, had a persistent cough before she was diagnosed.
While the majority of lung cancer deaths are attributed to smoking, there are still many mysteries about nonsmokers who get lung cancer, said ABC News Medical Editor Dr. Timothy Johnson.
"We really don't know what causes this cancer in nonsmokers. We just can't pinpoint a particular factor," he said.
Part of the problem may stem from a relatively small amount of research funding, according to both the Lung Cancer Alliance and Women Against Lung Cancer. For example, while breast cancer received more than $1.6 billion in funding for research from 1992 to 2004, lung cancer received $33 million, according to the alliance.
"We know very little about the processes that leads to lung cancer, and about why women seem to be affected differently than men," said Jill Siegfried, co-director of the lung and esophageal cancer program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, at an annual meeting of the Women Against Lung Cancer.
Related Stories
ABC News Live