THE proportion of people diagnosed with lung cancer who’ve never smoked is increasing, the World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed.
New research highlights air pollution as a growing factor in the increasing number of lung cancer cases worldwide.
Lung cancer in people who’ve never smoked is now the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the WHO.
Adenocarcinoma makes up as much as 70 per cent of lung cancer cases among never-smokers, according to the IARC.
In 2022, about 200,000 cases of adenocarcinoma were linked to air pollution, according to an IARC study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal.
The largest burden of adenocarcinoma attributable to air pollution was found in east Asia, particularly China, the research found.
The study’s lead author Dr Freddie Bray said the findings pointed to the need for urgent monitoring of the changing risk of lung cancer.
“With declines in smoking prevalence – as seen in the UK and US – the proportion of lung cancers diagnosed among those who have never smoked tends to increase,” the expert told The Guardian.
“Whether the global proportion of adenocarcinomas attributable to ambient air pollution will increase depends on the relative success of future strategies to curtail tobacco use and air pollution worldwide.”
The researchers also said that exposure to the burning of fuels in households for heating and cooking could be a factor in rising lung cancer cases among Chinese women who had never smoked.
Lung cancer continues to be the leading cause of cancer cases and deaths worldwide.
In 2022, around 2.5 million people were diagnosed with the disease.
In the UK alone, lung cancer causes around 34,800 deaths annually, making up one in five cancer-related deaths.
That’s roughly 95 deaths per day.
However, the patterns of incidence by subtype have shifted dramatically in recent decades.
Among the four main subtypes of lung cancer – adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, small-cell carcinoma, and large-cell carcinoma – adenocarcinoma has become the dominant subtype in both men and women, the IARC found.
Adenocarcinoma is a type of cancer that starts in mucus-producing glands that line the insides of the organs.
This is why it can affect different areas of the body, including the lungs, breast, bowel, or stomach.
Lung cancer rates in men have decreased over the past 40 years, while rates in women have risen.
Men still make up most cases (1.6 million in 2022), but the gap between male and female diagnoses is narrowing, with 900,000 women diagnosed in 2022.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/health/13449969/lung-cancer-non-smoker-increase/
