Health Solutions Live

Women could be more prone than men to the carcinogens and other harmful compounds in cigarette smoke, research suggests.
In a study of nearly 700 people with lung cancer, Swiss experts discovered that women tended to be younger when diagnosed, even though they smoked less than the men who went on to develop lung cancer.
In another study, researchers from Harvard University and the University of Bergen in Norway examined more than 950 men and women with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD,) known to be connected with smoking. They found that women with COPD were younger when diagnosed and had smoked less than the men with respiratory ailment.

“Perhaps women are more prone to the lung-damaging effects of smoking,” said Dr. Inga-Cecilie Soerheim, a visiting research fellow at Harvard and researcher at the University of Bergen, who led the COPD study. She revealed her findings in May at the American Thoracic Society’s annual conference.

In fact, many other studies in the past 2 decades have hinted that female smokers could be more prone to lung cancer than male smokers.

And Soerheim and her colleague, Dr. Dawn L. DeMeo, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, discovered that, in 2000, the amount of women dying from COPD surpassed the number of men, even though the researchers aren’t sure why.

However, Dr. Michael Thun, the emeritus director of epidemiology research at the American Cancer Society, inst as quick to accept the theory that women are more prone to lung cancer.

“The actual evidence suggests that men and women are remarkably similar in their risk of developing lung cancer — with or without smoking,” he said.

He did add, however, that the types of lung cancer they get are different, referring to the areas in the lung where the cancer is more likely to occur in women and men.

Addressing the new COPD research, which appears to indicate that women are more vulnerable, Thun said other factors might be at play. These include women’s longer life expectancy, this making them more prone to develop the condition.

Thun stated the focus on possible gender differences is missing the point. Instead, he said, health experts –and the public- should focus on what is certain: smoking is an enormous contributor to both lung cancer and COPD.

“If smokers quit before age 50, they avoid most of the risk,” he stated, quoting published research.

And once they do quit, Thun said, women and men can move on to other methods of reducing their risk for lung cancer, like avoiding exposure to second-hand smoke.

Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer death for men and women in the United States. More people die of lung cancer than of breast, colon and prostrate cancers combined, as stated by the American Cancer Society.

The society estimates that there will be over 219,000 new cases of lung cancer diagnosed this year and that 159.390 people will perish from the disease.

REFERENCE: Kathleen Doheny (2010) Is Smoking Tougher on Women? Retrieved from http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.aspx?docID=629357