Research has discovered an alarming new trend in women’s health – that whereas among men, rates of lung cancer may be going down, among women, lung cancer rates are rising.
New research has pointed to women’s failed attempts at trying to give up smoking that has caused this upward spike in rates of women with lung cancer. In the period between the 20 years from 1987 to 2006, a 10 per cent increase in rates of women’s lung cancer has been noted in the United Kingdom.
Whereas earlier the rate was 32.3 cases per hundred thousand women, that rate has now jumped to 35.4 % per hundred thousand. On the other hand lung cancer rates in men have come down from 70.4 cases for every hundred thousand men, to 59.4 cases per hundred thousand.
It has been observed that part of the reason for this is the fact that preventive measures for lung cancer – that is getting people to quit smoking – has been aimed mostly at men, rather than at women. There is now a strong requirement to target both genders to reduce smoking since this is the single most important factor for reducing rates of lung cancer.
