Lung Cancer Rates Among Nonsmokers Not on the Rise
Sept. 10 -- TUESDAY, Sept. 9 (HealthDay News) -- The most comprehensive global snapshot ever taken of lung cancer diagnoses and related death rates among patients who have never smoked has found that, contrary to prior indications, lung cancer risk is not on the rise.
The analysis also revealed that the lung cancer death rate among those who have never smoked is higher among men than women.
Both findings stem from an enormous collaborative international effort that draws on information from 13 large studies and 22 cancer registries, and represents upwards of 2 million men and women living in 10 countries across North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
"The great majority of lung cancers are caused by smoking," stressed study author Dr. Michael Thun, head of epidemiological research at the American Cancer Society. "But there has been a lot of interest lately in those lung cancer cases that affect patients who have never smoked, in part because of prominent nonsmoking patients who have had the disease in recent years, like Dana Reeve," who died from the disease at the age of 44 in 2006.
"This increased interest has led to a lot of concern, misperceptions and misconceptions regarding the state of risk and susceptibility," Thun added. "So, this work addresses this speculation, firstly by finding that, over the last 50 to 70 years, there has been no increase in lung cancer among people who have never smoked. And secondly, that the popular belief that 'never-smoked' women are more likely to develop the disease than men turns out not to be the case. And thirdly, that African-Americans have a higher death rate than whites."
Thun and his colleagues collectively published their observations in the September issue of PloS Medicine.
Their conclusions are based on incident and mortality rates for lung cancer among more than 630,000 and 1.8 million men and women (respectively) who had never smoked, and who had participated in one of 13 different large studies (each involving a minimum of 20,000 participants) conducted in North America, Europe or Asia.
