The association between smoking quantity and lung cancer in men and women.

Iyen-Omofoman B, Hubbard RB, Baldwin DR, Tata LJ.

Abstract

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

Recent studies have shown that for the same quantity of cigarettes smoked, women are more likely to develop heart disease than men, but studies in lung cancer have produced conflicting results. We studied the association between smoking quantity and lung cancer in men and women.

METHODS:

Using data from The Health Improvement Network (a United Kingdom medical research database), we generated a dataset consisting of 12,121 incident cases of lung cancer and 48,216 age, sex and general practice matched controls. We used conditional logistic regression to calculate odds ratios for lung cancer according to highest ever quantity smoked in men and women separately.

RESULTS:

The odds of lung cancer in women who had ever smoked heavily compared to those who had never smoked were increased 19-fold (odds ratio 19.10, 95% confidence interval 16.98-21.49) which was more than for men smoking the same quantity (odds ratio 12.81, 95% confidence interval 11.52-14.24). There was strong evidence of a difference in effect of quantity smoked on lung cancer between men and women (interaction p<0.0001) which remained after adjusting for height (a proxy marker for lung volume).

CONCLUSIONS:

Moderate and heavy smoking carry a higher risk of lung cancer in women than men and this difference does not seem to be explained by lung volume. Our findings suggest that extrapolating risk estimates for lung cancer in men to women will underestimate the adverse impact of smoking in women.

TimAllenMDJD

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

From Chest: The association between smoking quantity and lung cancer in men and women