There were three themes from the Monday, July 3 plenery session at the 2011 14th World Conference on Lung Cancer. First, the effect of smoking cessation on lung cancer incidence was discussed in relation to a recent study showing that women who smoke 20 cigarettes a day have a risk of developing lung cancer 30 times higher than non-smokers. However, the study also showed that quitting before age 50 reduced the risk to sic times higher and quitting before age 40 reduced it to 1.2 times higher almost completely eliminating the risk from smoking.
The second major theme discussed the shift from squamous cell carcinoma (SQC) to adenocarcinoma (ADC) as the most prevalent histologic type of lung cancer. The development of cigarette filters was discussed as one reason for this shift. It was proposed that cigarette filters causes smokers to inhale more deeply which delivers smoke to areas of the lung predisposed to adenocarcinogenesis. Further, low tar/low nicotine formulations cause smokers to inhale more often, resulting in an increased volume per puff, to achieve the same nicotine dose.
Finally, the third theme explored recent work describing the association between variants in chromosome 15q25, which encodes nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, and smoking behaviors that not only make it harder for people to quit smoking but also are associated with increased smoking intensity.
Recent Comments