Lung cancer diagnosis on the rise in non-smokers
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With lung cancer coming in as the fifth most common type of cancer diagnosed in Australia, but ranking as the leading cause of cancer death, experts are calling for more research to help identify it in its early stages and determine risk factors in non-smokers.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">An example of a person with lung cancer, despite having never smoked, is US comedian Kathy Griffin who recently revealed she has been diagnosed with the cancer.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Because the cancer was caught early and is confined to her left lung, the 60-year-old comedian will undergo surgery to remove half of her left lung.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Following her surgery, Griffin is on the mend and keeping fans up-to-date with her recovery.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Griffin isn’t alone either, with a growing number of people receiving a lung cancer diagnosis without ever smoking.</span></p>
<p><strong>Not just a “smoker’s disease”</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Though smoking is one of the largest risk factors for lung cancer, the proportion of those diagnosed with the disease who are “never-smokers” is increasing.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">According to the Cancer Council NSW, about 35 percent of Australian women and 15 percent of men who have been diagnosed with the condition were life-long non-smokers.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This increase in the condition has been seen in other countries with a </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28132018/" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">2017 study</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> of lung cancer patients in US hospitals finding the percentage of never-smokers increased from eight percent in 1990 to 1995, to 14.9 percent from 2011 to 2013.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Surgeon Andrew Kaufman, whose program for never-smokers at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York has treated 3,800 patients in 10 years, said: “Since the early 2000s, we have seen what I think is truly an epidemiological shift in lung cancer.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“It is well-documented that approximately 20 percent of lung cancer cases that occur in women in the US and nine percent of cases in men, are diagnosed in never-smokers,” he confirmed.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, the reasons why more people are being diagnosed without smoking is not well known.</span></p>
<p><strong>More research is needed</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr Marianne Weber, a senior research fellow at the Daffodil Centre, is overseeing a new study to identify potential risk factors for those who don’t smoke.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">By poring over two large population studies in Australia and China, the researchers are looking to link lung cancer to factors such as diet, lifestyle, and household air pollution.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“If we can highlight a risk profile for someone who might go on to develop lung cancer when they’re a non-smoker, that would be ideal,” Dr Weber said.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So far, cancer doctors have found one group of people who are more at risk: women.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Worldwide, half of female lung cancer patients have never smoked, while only 15 percent of male lung cancer patients are never-smokers.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Josephine Feliciano, an oncologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said that, beyond sex, “nothing stands out as a single large risk factor” for lung cancer in non-smokers.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“But air pollution, radon, family history of lung cancer, [and] genetic predispositions [all play a role],” Feliciano said.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Additionally, chronic lung infections and lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) seems to increase the risk of diagnosis.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Of all the patients that present with the disease, the current survival rate is only about 17 percent,” said Dr Stirling, a senior respiratory specialist at The Alfred Hospital and leader of the Victorian Lung Cancer Registry.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“For patients with stage four disease the median survival, so that’s the time at which 50 percent of patients will succumb to the disease, is somewhere between seven and 12 months.”</span></p>
