FACT: About 13% of all new cancers are lung cancers.
The American Cancer Society’s estimates for lung cancer in the United States for 2019
are: About 228,150 new cases of lung cancer (116,440 in men and 111,710 in women)
About 142,670 deaths from lung cancer (76,650 in men and 66,020 in women).
Research has shown that nonsmokers who reside with a smoker have a 24%
increase in risk for developing lung cancer when compared with other nonsmokers.
An estimated 7,300 lung cancer deaths occur each year in the U.S. that are also
attributable to passive smoking.
An average smoker gets about 200 hits of nicotine a day, and over 70,000 hits per year. Ten puffs per cigarette, times 20 cigarettes a day gives you about 200 hits of nicotine a day. Smoking is a practice in which a substance is burned and the resulting smoke is typically breathed in to be tasted and absorbed into the bloodstream.
Most commonly, the substance used is the dried leaves of the tobacco plant, which have been rolled into a small rectangle of rolling paper to create a small, round cylinder called
a cigarette. Smoking is primarily practiced as a route of administration for recreational drug use because the combustion of the dried plant leaves vaporizes and delivers active substances into the lungs where they are rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and reach bodily tissue.
In the case of cigarette smoking, these substances are contained in a mixture of aerosol particles and gases and include the pharmacologically active alkaloid nicotine; the vaporization creates heated aerosol and gas into a form that allows inhalation and deep penetration into the lungs where absorption into the bloodstream of the active substances occurs. In some cultures, smoking is also carried out as a part of various rituals, where participants use it to help induce trance-like states that, they believe, can lead them to spiritual enlightenment.
The first explanation of why rates of lung cancer in women have increased:
Many started smoking later than men, pushing back their peak in smoking-related
lung cancer diagnoses Women also started smoking in the years when filtered cigarettes were most commonly used.
This led to an increased risk of a type of cancer called adenocarcinoma due to the way cigarette filters distribute tobacco smoke to the outer parts of the lungs.
Some studies suggest that women are more susceptible to the carcinogenic effects
of exposure to tobacco and cigarette smoke, including second-hand smoke, and may
develop lung cancer after fewer years of smoking compared to men.
However, it’s important to note that most people diagnosed today with lung cancer are not active smokers. About 20 percent of women with lung cancer have never smoked — higher than for men with lung cancer who’ve never smoked.
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Lung cancer risk factors
Besides smoking and secondhand smoke, there are several other lung cancer risk factors. These include a family history of cancer and exposure to asbestos, radon, and air pollution. Exposure to carcinogens in the workplace in the form of inhaled chemicals such as arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, silica, and nickel is still a concern in some parts of the world. The potential lung cancer risk of e-cigarette and marijuana smoke is still under study but is of potential concern.
Recently, researchers have also found that genetics can play a role in lung cancer risk in some patients with a strong history of lung cancer. Studies of these families have helped identify potential susceptibility genes for lung cancer and environmental risk factors. Like BRCA1 and BRCA2 in breast cancer, alterations in genes that promote or protect against tumor development can contribute to lung cancer development.
Researchers have yet to identify specific mutations that may predispose individuals to lung cancer. However, studying familial genetic predispositions can help elucidate how lung cancer develops and lead to new biomarkers for early cancer detection in high-risk groups.
What smoking does to your body – Bing video?
What smoking does to your lungs – Bing video?
Lung Cancer Rates Are Soaring Among Unlikely Groups —
an Oncologist Explains Why.
Screening and diagnosis
In 2021, the United States Preventive Services Task Force updated its lung cancer screening guidelines to include younger patients with less smoking history. Now, lung cancer screening is recommended for adults ages 50 to 80 who have smoked at least one pack per day for 20 years, current smokers, and former smokers who quit smoking within the last 15 years. Women at risk for lung cancer can talk to their doctors about ordering a low-dose CT scan for lung cancer screening.
Nationwide, more than 70 percent of eligible women undergo breast cancer screening, but less than 6 percent of all eligible smokers pursue lung cancer screening. Researchers estimate that these new screening guidelines will increase the number of women eligible for lung cancer screening by 40 percent by including those at a younger age who have less smoking exposure.
In recent years, increasing understanding of the genetic changes that can lead to
cancer and how to harness the immune system to treat cancer has led to new targeted therapies and immunotherapies that have improved the prognosis of patients with lung cancer. Women tend to have a better lung cancer prognosis than men, especially if they have never smoked and have tumors with molecular changes that can be treated with targeted therapies.
However, lung cancer symptoms may go unrecognized in women. Symptoms of lung cancer can include coughing, shortness of breath, overwhelming fatigue, and pain in the back, chest, or shoulder, which could be confused for other ailments.
Because women tend to be slightly younger when diagnosed than men, patients may be able to tolerate symptoms longer and delay seeking medical attention. Physicians also might not attribute these symptoms to lung cancer due to a patient’s younger age.
Recognizing the early symptoms of lung cancer, expanding lung cancer screening eligibility, and testing for genetic biomarkers to select the best therapy are some of the steps that could help address the global epidemic of lung cancer in women.
This article was originally published on The Conversation by Estelamari Rodriguez at the University of Miami. Read the original article here.
Why Are More Nonsmoking Women Getting Lung Cancer?
Oncologist Julie Brahmer is trying to understand why more women who have never smoked are developing lung cancer. (Non Smoking men are, too, but to a lesser extent.) Toxins in the environment, genetic predisposition and interactions with hormones may hold clues to why this is occurring.
This topic—and dozens more health concerns—will be addressed at A Woman’s Journey, the annual Johns Hopkins Medicine conference that offers insights on women’s physical and emotional health.
That’s how Brahmer views her studies on women and lung cancer.
In recent years, Brahmer, director of the Thoracic Oncology Program at Johns Hopkins and an international leader in lung cancer clinical trials, has witnessed rising rates of lung cancer in her female patients who’ve neither smoked nor had regular exposure to tobacco smoke.
Brahmer will share her clinical experiences, research and success with new immunotherapies—cancer treatments that boost the body’s natural ability
to fight cancer—at the conference.
Brahmer’s session on lung cancer in women who have never smoked will likely draw strong interest, says Yasmine Sursock-Khouri, a marketing project manager for the event, because the news is so alarming.
But for nonsmokers between the ages of 40 and 79, more women than men are at risk
for developing lung cancer. The latest data show an incidence rate in nonsmoking women ranging from 14.4 to 20.8 percent. For nonsmoking men, the rate is between 4.8 and 13.7 percent.
Brahmer says, “Patients who have never smoked are shocked and ask, ‘Why me?’”
It’s not clear whether the causes are environmental, hormonal or genetic, she adds,
“but we’re looking at this carefully and pressing the government to do the same.”
Brahmer acknowledges that exposure to secondhand smoke and high radon levels,
as well as family history, can also raise risks. “We haven’t been able to find a particular gene,” she says, “but having a sibling or parent with lung cancer also increases your risk.” She also wants women to be aware of symptoms that can alert a patient and physician to lung cancer before the spread of disease.
Red flags include shortness of breath, an incessant cough and overwhelming fatigue.
Brahmer chose to study lung cancer in the 1990s because treatment for the disease was then in its infancy. Her interest was also personal: Several of her family members died from lung cancer. All were men, but in her practice, Brahmer began noticing that more women who had no exposure to tobacco smoke were developing lung cancer.
From the outset of her career, she’s been working on lung cancer treatments.
For the past dozen years, she’s been helping to develop immunotherapies to treat patients with lung cancer. Brahmer’s clinical trial results led to the approval of immunotherapy to treat non-small cell lung cancer.
The side effects of immunotherapy differ drastically from those of chemotherapy, notorious for causing extreme nausea, Brahmer explains. Immunotherapy can cause inflammation of organs, including lungs, colon and skin. But the number of Brahmer’s female patients who require treatment for these side effects, she says, is only 15 percent. And those symptoms can be relieved by steroids.
Spending time with patients inspires Brahmer to press harder for more clinical research dollars. “To see people respond to therapy—and for these women to be able to see their kids graduate from high school or have grandchildren—has been gratifying,” she says. With more funding, she adds, “we can have an impact on how well patients do, and, over the next 10 years, we think it will be possible to cure more patients with this disease.”
Brahmer has been a featured speaker at AWJ in Palm Beach as well as Baltimore.
“It’s been a great experience to see so many women vested in their health,” she says.
“People need to keep lung cancer on their radar; it’s not just ovarian or breast cancer
that can strike women.”
AWJ has taken place in nine locations, including Palm Beach and Naples, Florida,
where the topic of rising rates of lung cancer in nonsmoking women will also be covered.
In recent years, in partnership with Johns Hopkins Medicine International, the program has expanded to Bermuda and Saudi Arabia. Employees receive a 10 percent discount for registration. Continuing education units also are offered by professional groups.