About a third of lung cancer now occur in non-smokers

About a third of lung cancers occur in non-smokers, which calls into question the origin of these diseases hitherto almost entirely attributed to smoking, said a specialist at a press briefing held in the conference Eurocancer which ended in Paris.
For several years, oncologists attending the emergence of a new disease in the lung cancer, lung adenocarcinoma, in people who never smoked, said Dr. Thierry Le Chevalier, of the Institut Gustave Roussy (Villejuif, Val-de-Marne).

So far, more than 90% of cases of lung cancer, the main risk factor was incriminated tobacco. But a large U.S. study showed that among patients with lung cancer, 30% were nonsmokers.

Women seem to be more affected than men by the new disease, which explains the sharp rise in female lung cancer have been multiplied by four in ten years, said the cancer.

Faced with this disturbing finding, relatively good news: lung adenocarcinoma prognosis is better and is much more sensitive to therapeutic agents that lung cancer is a serious cancer, rapidly fatal.

Studies have shown that non-smoking patients responded to treatment that did not meet the patients who smoke. Work led to the IGR has also demonstrated a high response rate to chemotherapy (50%), never seen in other cases, said Dr. Knight.

Then to consider a general screening of the entire population exhibitor not so active in tobacco, there is not one that the specialist does not even consider that one day passed.

In Japan, however, the International Depiscan program including evaluating the value of low-dose helical CT, comparing its annual appeal to the absence of screening, showed that regular screening possible to discover small adenocarcinomas early responding well treatment.

In France, the program is only for smokers and ex-smokers. It does not concern the population likely to benefit from early detection and can therefore confirm the Japanese data, acknowledged Dr. Knight. It also admits that there is so far no assumptions about the risk factors for this form of lung cancer growing, which is not without causing some concern.