By: Jennifer Jope for Fibroids1 Smoking causes lung cancer, right? According to a study published in late 2006, the answer to that question is less clear cut than we may have thought.
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If you smoke or could inherit lung cancer based on your family history, it’s worth asking your doctor about a screening. While these screenings haven’t been proven to help prevent deaths from lung cancer, they can help detect abnormalities sooner.
Chest X-ray
Sputum Cytology (The CDC describes this as a procedure that looks for cancer cells in phlegm under a microscope)
CAT scan of the lungs |
In the October 2006 issue of the journal Chest, researchers found that a person’s risk of developing lung cancer doubled if a parent or sibling had the disease. There were also some ironic findings: the risk of inheriting lung cancer is higher for people who never smoked, as compared to current smokers.
The research data, which spanned 13 years from more than 102,000 Japanese women and men, also found that women are at greater risk of inheriting lung cancer than men. Their risk is tripled if they have a parent or sibling with lung cancer. This news comes as a more recent study at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Northern California Cancer Center found that lung cancer rates are higher among female non-smokers than previously thought.
The study, which was published this year in the February 10 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, attributes factors like secondhand smoke to the increase in female nonsmoking lung cancer. “We know that secondhand smoke does increase the risk of lung cancer,” said co-author Ellen Chang, ScD, an epidemiologist at the Northern California Cancer Center and a member of the Stanford Comprehensive Cancer Center. “So it's likely that a lot of the cases we observe are attributable to that.”
This theory is related to gender differences as well: men are more likely to smoke than women. Therefore, women who are diagnosed with the disease aren’t necessarily smoking, but instead are surrounded by the smoke. Other factors include exposure to asbestos, chromium, and arsenic, but these causes have not been entirely proven in research.
Lung cancer has been in the news in recent years with the deaths of ABC news anchor Peter Jennings and Christopher Reeve’s wife, Dana. While Jennings admitted to smoking, Reeve never smoked.
According to 2003 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people die from lung cancer than any other cancer. In 2003, more than 105,000 men and more than 84,000 women were diagnosed with lung cancer. More than 89,000 men died of lung cancer, while more than 68,000 women were killed by the disease.
As for nonsmokers who could inherit the disease, the study is yet more confirmation that people with a direct relation to lung cancer should tell their doctors and add it to their family medical history. Family history seemed to be especially important when dealing with squamous cell carcinoma, as compared to other types.
It is important to note that the study did not find that a family history of any type of cancer was related to lung cancer in nonsmokers. This research was also only conducted in a population of Japanese people.
If you have a family history of lung cancer, and especially if you are a female, alert your doctor and discuss the issue. While it’s still difficult to determine the exact causes of lung cancer in nonsmokers, there are preventive measures you can take – such as avoiding smoke and other pollutants (like radon) and eating a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables.
