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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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Lung Cancer is Leading Cause of Cancer Deaths in US Women [05/03-3]
Excerpts from: More women die of lung cancer than any other kind. Smokers, beware
By Karen Springen Newsweek [05/02/04]
Quick-what's the leading cancer killer of women? If you answered "breast cancer," you're not alone-but you're wrong. Lung cancer is far deadlier. Its five-year survival rate is 15 percent, compared with 86 percent for breast cancer, and it takes a bigger toll. Breast cancer killed 40,000 U.S. women last year; lung cancer, 69,000. And though the disease is largely preventable, the annual toll has grown by 600 percent since 1930. The reason: cigarettes. More than 85 percent of women who get lung cancer are current or former smokers-yet one woman in five still smokes. "People have a general sense that tobacco is harmful," says Dr. Michele Bloch of the National Cancer Institute, "but they don't appreciate the magnitude of the risk."
Cigarettes can kill anyone, but the risks are especially high for women. New studies suggest that women develop lung cancer at a younger age than men, and after fewer years of smoking. In January, researchers reported that women smokers were more than twice as likely as men to develop lung cancer after a given number of "pack-years" (packs per day times the number of years spent smoking). Why are women more susceptible? They may metabolize the carcinogens in tobacco differently, says University of Wisconsin oncologist Joan Schiller. Or their bodies may have more trouble repairing DNA damaged by the carcinogens in tobacco smoke. And estrogen may speed the growth of cancerous lung cells. Even among nonsmokers, women's lung-cancer rates are somewhat higher than men's.
What will it take to stop this scourge? Earlier detection might help. Some doctors now use CT scans to check high-risk women for nascent tumors, but studies have not yet demonstrated the survival benefits. And last week researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reported that patients with a specific genetic mutation in their tumors-most often women and nonsmokers-were likely to see them shrink when they took the drug Iressa. A cheaper and surer strategy would be to stop glamorizing tobacco. Lung cancer surpassed breast cancer as the top cancer killer among women exactly 19 years after the Virginia Slims campaign debuted. In 2001, tobacco companies spent a record $11.2 billion on promotions and advertising.
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