Date Published: 11 September 2008
Study looks at lung cancer in non-smokers
While the majority of lung cancer studies have inevitably focused on the issue of tobacco smoking, a new US study has shed light on the ten to 15% of lung cancers that are not caused by smoking.
Researchers at the American Cancer Society analysed data on lung cancer in North America, Europe and Asia between 1960 and 2004 in people who had never smoked.
The statistics, which were gathered from 13 large cohort studies, contained over 630,000 individual pieces of information on lung cancer incidence and 1.8 million on mortality.
"Lung cancer is obviously a significant public health and medical problem, even beyond the overwhelming disease burden caused by tobacco smoking." - American Cancer Society researchers
The researchers found that the disease is most likely to occur in men, African Americans and Asians, and that death rates among people who have never smoked have remained stable over the last few decades.
The risk of lung cancer among lifelong non-smokers was found to be almost equal to that of brain and other nervous system cancers.
Men who had never smoked had a 1.1% risk of dying from lung cancer before the age of 85, with women facing a slightly lower risk of 0.8%.
For smokers, the risk of dying from lung cancer is 22.1% for men and 11.9% for women.
The researchers noted that, while lung cancer rates among non-smokers do not appear to have risen in recent years, the disease is still significant.
"Lung cancer is obviously a significant public health and medical problem, even beyond the overwhelming disease burden caused by tobacco smoking," they concluded. The findings are published in the journal PLoS Medicine.
Source: Cancer Research UK.
