Lung Cancer Rates in Young Women Plummet Globally

First Posted: May 17, 2014 09:09 AM EDT
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Could we be beating lung cancer? We just might be when it comes to the younger generation.  A new study reveals that lung cancer rates for young women are dropping in many regions of the globe, suggesting that tobacco control is having a large rate of success among the younger population.

Lung cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide. In fact, an estimated 491,200 women died of lung cancer in 2012; more than half of these women lived in economically developing countries. This hints that the differences in smoking patterns can count for much of the variation seen around the globe.

In order to examine the rates of lung cancer across the globe, the researchers documented and compared contemporary trends in lung cancer mortality. Using the World Health Organization's Cancer Mortality Database, they covered populations on six continents to calculate age-standardized lung cancer death rates during 2006 to 2010.

So what did they find? It turns out that lung cancer mortality rates among young women between the ages of 30 to 49 were stable or declining in 47 of the 52 populations examined. In contrast, older women between the ages of 50 to 74 experienced increasing rates for more than half of the populations examined. What was more interesting, though, was where these rates were increasing; it occurred in countries in Southern, Eastern and Western Europe and South America. This indicates that these countries still don't have the same tobacco control policies as others.

"The widespread reduction in lung cancer we found in young women in many parts of the globe is encouraging, and probably reflects both successful tobacco control efforts and increased awareness about the health hazards of smoking," said Lindsey Torre, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The greatest opportunity we have right now for slowing a tobacco-fueled epidemic is in those countries where smoking among women is rare, such as Africa and most of Asia. And while decreasing lung cancer death rates are encouraging, many countries have yet to implement the kinds of comprehensive tobacco control measures that have led to drops in other countries."

The findings are published in the journal Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers.

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