Women with lung cancer have more tissue damage but they survive longer

Main Category: Lung Cancer
Article Date: 18 Apr 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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Women with lung cancer have more tissue damage than men, but they survive longer, say researchers. It seems that women are affected differently by lung cancer than men.

Women respond differently to one (maybe more) cancer drug than men. If women smoke, they show more elevated levels of tobacco-induced genetic damage in the lungs.

Researchers who carried out this study say that some of these differences may come from the effects of estrogen (UK spelling is Oestrogen).

You can read about this study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The research was led by Dr. Peter Bach, Dr. Mark Kris, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and Dr. Jyoti Patel, Northwestern University.

We do not yet know who has the biggest risk, a man who smokes or a woman who smokes (the same amount).

The researchers said that women have a higher probability of developing adenocarcinoma. They do not know why. It is the lung cancer non-smokers most commonly get. Fewer women smoke than men.

Even though women have smoked less than men, they seem to experience higher rates of genetic damage caused by tobacco in lung tumors (UK spelling - Tumours). Women cannot repair the genetic damage as well as men can.

Female smokers have a more active version than men of a gene that makes cigarette-smoke chemicals harmful to cells.

Women who have lung cancer survive longer than men.

Iressa, a lung cancer drug, is more effective on women than on men.

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