Lung cancer rates high for women nonsmokers

Researchers are moving beyond chemotherapy to study the biology of lung cancer to defeat this killer.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Oct. 15, 2007.

Washington -- A sizeable number of lung cancers are diagnosed among women who never used tobacco, according to new findings. Two recent examples illustrate this point. The disease caused the death this year of opera legend Beverly Sills and last year of Dana Reeve, wife of actor Christopher Reeve. Neither was ever a smoker.

Although most lung cancers are the result of smoking, one-quarter of cases worldwide, accounting for 300,000 deaths, are not attributable to this cause, says a study in the October Nature Reviews Cancer. And more of these cases occur among women than men.

Yet the disease is not always suspected among nonsmokers, and their symptoms can be attributed instead to other conditions, said researchers and clinicians who spoke at a Sept. 17 Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by the Society for Women's Health Research.

Joan Schiller, MD, deputy director of Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, recounted the following experience: By the time she saw one particular patient, the woman had been coughing for a year. During that period, she had been treated for asthma, but she actually had lung cancer.

Yet, early referrals can make a difference, because there has been slight progress in treatment, Dr. Schiller said. Chemotherapy with any of the four regimens in use does result in small improvements in survival rates. "[But] I think we have come to the end of our progress with chemotherapy," she added. "We need to move on to therapies based on the biology of lung cancer."