Women have been urged to take anti-smoking messages more seriously after new research showed lung cancer rates rising among the female population but declining among men.
Lung cancer has traditionally been an overwhelmingly male disease, but growing numbers of women are being diagnosed with what is the UK's biggest cancer killer. The trend has alarmed senior doctors, who are urging female smokers to quit and calling on the NHS to do more to warn women of the dangers of taking up the habit.
Alexander Ives and Dr Julia Verne, of the NHS's South West Public Health Observatory, used data from the UK Association of Cancer Registries to identify women in England diagnosed with the disease between 1985 and 2006. They found that: "Lung cancer incidence for females increased significantly from 1985-87 (32.3 per 100,000) to 2004-06 (35.4 per 100,000)", a 10% rise. Most recent figures give the rate for men in England as 60 per 100,000.
See more
