Lung Cancer Hits Women Differently

[Amy P]

This was on our Employee Assistance Site this morning thought I would share although I am not sure what to think of it.

Lung cancer hits women differently

Source: Detroit Free Press

Author: PATRICIA ANSTETT

Date: April 19, 2005

Doctors are discovering gender differences in lung cancer.

Not only are women catching up to men in getting the disease, they are more likely to develop lung cancer before age 50, according to a comprehensive analysis of lung cancer in the United States.

Yet women have a better chance of being free of cancer five years later, at every stage of diagnosis.

The study by the University of Michigan and Wayne State Medical School researchers was published in the March issue of the journal Chest, published by the American College of Chest Physicians. It analyzed 22,572 cancer patients, 36 percent of them women, in the federal cancer registry known as SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results).

Overall, women and men typically are diagnosed with lung cancer at about the same age: 66 years, the study found.

But 8.6 percent of women were diagnosed before 50, compared with 6.9 percent of men.

Women also tend to have different kinds of lung cancer. More women are diagnosed with adenocarcinomas, non-small-cell lung cancers found in the outer reaches of the lungs. They are most likely linked to the use of filtered cigarettes, says Dr. Gregory Kalemkerian, senior author of the study. Adenocarcinomas accounted for 44.7 percent of the diagnoses of women in the study. Small-cell cancers, those in hormonal cells in the lungs, accounted for 22.6 percent.

By comparison, squamous cell carcinomas, another type of non-small-cell cancer, found in lung airways, accounted for 36.3 percent of lung cancers in men, followed by adenocarcinomas, diagnosed in 33.2 percent.

Other findings:

Incidence of lung cancer in men peaked in 1984, at 72.5 cases per 100,000 people. It declined to 47 for each 100,000 by 1999. By comparison, incidence rates for women peaked at 33.1 per 100,000 in 1991, and have held steady between 30.2 and 32.3 per 100,000 from 1992 to 1999.

Metastatic disease was the most common stage at diagnosis for men (43.4 percent) and women (43.9 percent).

Kalemkerian says that although the study has some limitations, largely because the SEER database has no information about a person's smoking history and habits, it provides good information for future studies to analyze gender differences in lung cancer.

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Copyright ©2004 Detroit Free Press. All Rights Reserved

[Donna G]

Interesting, it must be that Estrogen again. Donna G

[Snowflake]

Amy,

I appreciate the article, a relatively new one (2004), but did you notice the years listed in the statistics?

Other findings:

Incidence of lung cancer in men peaked in 1984, at 72.5 cases per 100,000 people. It declined to 47 for each 100,000 by 1999. By comparison, incidence rates for women peaked at 33.1 per 100,000 in 1991, and have held steady between 30.2 and 32.3 per 100,000 from 1992 to 1999.

I think it would be nice to see some new numbers, ya know? Sure shows how much research ISN'T going into lung cancer when the stats are so far behind...

[Amy P]

Snowflake -

I agree that's why I wasn't quite sure what to make of it, that and the comment about adenocarcinoma being primarily caused by unfiltered cigarette's as I was under the impression (and I am not sure where I heard this) that adeno was common in non-smokers. Hopefully someone will be along that will have some additional insight into this. I am really curious now!

Much Love,

Amy