Lung Cancer in U.S. Women Is
'Epidemic'
(April 13, 2004 -HealthDayNews)
If Many women worry that
they'll get breast cancer, but a new report says lung cancer is actually a
bigger threat to their health.
Last year, nearly 70,000 women died from lung cancer in the United States.
That's more deaths than from breast cancer and all gynecological cancers
combined. The death rate from lung cancer rose 600 percent between 1930 and
1997, according to the report, which appears in the April 14 issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association.
The paper, agreeing with a report issued by the U.S. Surgeon General, says
the nation "is clearly in the midst of an epidemic. Lung cancer in U.S.
women occurred suddenly and in numbers clearly in excess of normal
expectancy."
"Smoking is the largest risk factor for lung cancer," said study co-author
Dr. Jyoti Patel, an instructor of medicine in the division of
hematology/oncology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern
University in Chicago.
"During World War II, women went into the workforce and started to smoke
like men. Twenty years later, they started to die like men, from lung
cancer," says Dr. Jay Brooks, chief of hematology and oncology at the
Ochsner Clinic Foundation Hospital in New Orleans.
Nearly one in four cancer deaths in women in 2003 were expected to be from
lung cancer. At the same time women's rates of lung cancer deaths have been
increasing, they've been decreasing for men.
In their report, Patel and her colleagues explained that one reason for this
difference may be that women are more susceptible to lung cancer than men.
This is a controversial topic among researchers, however. Some studies have
shown women are more prone to the disease, but others have failed to confirm
these findings or have found the opposite to be true.
While it wasn't included in Patel's analysis, one of the most recent studies
on the subject found female smokers had double the risk of lung cancer that
male smokers do. Results of this study were presented in December 2003 at
the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
The topic of women's susceptibility may still be controversial, but Patel
said one thing that isn't is that there are biological differences in the
way lung cancer acts in women than in men. For example, women tend to live
longer than men after being diagnosed with lung cancer. That may be because
lung cancer cells have more estrogen receptors than normal lung cells do,
according to Patel, who added that more gender-specific lung cancer research
needs to be done.
Despite the huge rise in lung cancer, and the knowledge that smoking causes
other illnesses, the researchers noted that nearly one-quarter of all
American women still smoke.
"Women need to realize that they can reduce their risk of cancer by one half
if they don't smoke and they're not obese," Brooks says.
"We have to make smoking less socially acceptable," explained Patel, who
said it's a difficult task because the tobacco industry spends billions of
dollars per year on advertising and marketing, yet only about $100 million
is spent on smoking cessation efforts.
Patel said it's especially important to get the message to other countries
where female smoking rates are currently low, so they don't repeat the
mistake.
"The tobacco industry sees a huge opportunity worldwide," said Dr. Michael
Thun, head of epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society. Thun
says Spain is an example of how tobacco marketing can work. He says that at
the end of World War II, very few Spanish women smoked. But with the
collapse of Franco's dictatorship, the tobacco industry marketed cigarettes
using positive images coupling smoking with independence and freedom, and
the rates of female smoking increased dramatically.
"Using images of liberation and democracy to ensnare women into smoking is a
massive global problem, and it's appalling," Thun said. Brooks added that
other tobacco marketing sends women the message that if you smoke, you will
be thin.
Brooks recommended showing young women pictures of how they can prematurely
age from smoking. Thun suggested appealing to a teen's sense of freedom and
justice, and ask them, "Why would you want to be entrapped by a huge, lying
industry?"
Finally, Thun pointed out, "Lung cancer, although a huge burden, is less
than a third of all deaths that smoking causes."
More information
To learn more about lung cancer, visit the National Cancer Institute (www.cancer.gov
) or the American Cancer Society (www.cancer.org ). Try QuitNet (www.quitnet.com
) for help in giving up the habit.