Lung cancer is more deadly to women than any other type of cancer. Yet it’s often overshadowed by diseases like breast cancer, which receives the lion’s share of media coverage and research funding. According to a recent study:
-1 in 5 women diagnosed with lung cancer has never smoked, compared to 1 in 12 men.
-Women tend to develop lung cancer at a younger age than men.
-Women who develop lung cancer, though, tend to survive longer than men, no matter how early it was discovered.
Results also acknowledge the complexities of lung cancer, pointing to activity on a molecular level. For example, women suffer more DNA damage than men, even if they smoke less. As a recent NPR article notes, the disease “needs to be thought of as a collection of malignancies that arise in the lungs.”
More than 70,000 women in the US died of lung cancer last year—that’s nearly 200 per day. So why does the disease get less attention than breast, prostate or colon cancer, which receive substantially more research funding compared to mortality rate.
One reason is the link to smoking. But while the majority of female lung cancer patients are former or current smokers, 20% have never smoked. But stats aside, it’s important to acknowledge the intricacies of any illness—including behavioral, genetic and environmental factors—and to look beyond stigmas. In the case of women and lung cancer, that means focusing on preventing, detecting and treating a disease that we can’t afford to overlook.
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