What makes Asian women more prone to lung cancer?
November 14, 2012 | 4:56pm
MANILA, Philippines - Asian women, whether they smoke or not, are more prone to developing lung cancer due to their genetic variations.
This is according to a study conducted by a team of international researchers from the United States' National Cancer Institute. The study was published online in Nature Genetics on November 11.
A news release published in the National Institutes of Health website said that the study showed "further evidence that risk of lung cancer among never-smokers, especially Asian women, may be associated with certain unique inherited genetic characteristics that distinguishes it from lung cancer in smokers."
According to the same news release, lung cancer among "never smokers" is the seventh leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Most of these deaths among non-women smokers occurred in East Asian countries.
The study was conducted among around 14,000 Asian women, 6,600 of whom had lung cancer and 7,500 did not.
"Although environmental factors, such as secondhand smoke (also known as environmental tobacco smoke) or exhaust from indoor cooking are likely account for some cases of lung cancer among Asian women who have never smoked, they explain only a small proportion of the disease," the news release said.
The study's senior investigator, Dr. Nathaniel Rothman of the NCI's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, said that these variants "may also increase lung cancer risk associated with environmental factors such as environmental tobacco smoke."
Tobacco smoke is still one of the most widely known causes of lung cancer, according to the World Health Organization.
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