Lung cancer deaths to top breast cancer cases

Lung cancer deaths among European women are expected to overtake those of breast cancer for the first time this year.

The trend is largely driven by women in the UK and their long history of smoking, say researchers.

Predicted lung cancer deaths for women in Europe were set to rise by 9% between 2009 and 2015, reaching an incidence level of 14.24 per 100,000 of population.

In contrast, death rates from breast cancer were due to fall by 10.2% to 14.22 per 100,000.

The bleakest women’s lung cancer forecasts were for the UK and Poland, with 2015 mortality rates of 21 and 17 per 100,000 of population respectively.

At the other end of the scale, Spain’s rate was predicted to be just over eight deaths per 100,000 of population.

Lead researcher Professor Carlo La Vecchia, from the University of Milan in Italy, said: “UK and Polish women, particularly UK women, have long had much higher lung cancer rates than most other European countries (except Denmark, which is not considered separately in this study).

“This is due to the fact that British women started smoking during the Second World War, while in most other EU countries women started to smoke after 1968.”

The study looked at cancer rates in 28 EU member states as a whole and also in the six largest countries, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK.

As well as assessing overall cancer trends it also focused on individual cancers of the stomach, intestines, pancreas, lung, prostate, breast, and uterus/cervix, as well as leukaemia.

It predicted a total of 1,359,100 deaths from cancer in the countries in 2015, corresponding to an incident rate of 138.4 per 100,000 men and 83.9 per 100,000 women.

Overall cancer deaths were due to fall by 7.5% and 6% in men and women respectively since 2009.

The findings appear in the journal Annals of Oncology, whose associate editor for epidemiology Professor Paolo Boffetta, said: “The decrease in overall cancer mortality rates among European men and women which started in the 1990s does not seem to slow down: this is the major favourable conclusion of the 2015 report.

“On the other hand, the continuing increase in lung cancer mortality among European women represents a challenge for cancer control.”