Study: Among nonsmokers, lung cancer kills more men

WASHINGTON -- Lung cancer is not common in people who have never smoked, but when they do get the disease, women were more likely to die than men, doctors had long thought. New research suggests the opposite.

Analyzing medical records of nearly 1 million people, American Cancer Society researchers reported yesterday that men who had never used cigarettes actually had slightly higher death rates from lung cancer than women who had not smoked.

''The conventional wisdom . . . is wrong," concluded Dr. Michael Thun, the lead author of the report, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

More black women who had never smoked died of lung cancer, however, than white women.

Lung cancer is the world's most common and deadliest malignancy. More than 174,000 Americans will be diagnosed with it this year, and 162,400 will die. Smoking cigarettes is the main cause.

But about 15,000 of the deaths will be people who have never used cigarettes. Other known causes: breathing secondhand smoke, exposure to radon and asbestos, smoking other tobacco products, and high-dose radiation.

The gender issue made headlines this spring when lung cancer claimed a nonsmoker, Dana Reeve, widow of ''Superman" star Christopher Reeve, who died of a heart attack in October 2004. He was paralyzed after being thrown by a horse in 1995.

Thun analyzed two cancer-prevention studies that tracked more than 940,000 Americans' health for 20 years. Among those who said they had never smoked, the death rate from lung cancer per 100,000 people was 17.1 for men and 14.7 for women in the most recent of the two studies; the earlier study showed similar rates.

Lung cancer usually strikes older people, and there are far more women than men over age 60 who have never smoked.