Death from lung cancer has been rising steadily at an annual rate of 2.3% over the past decade among women living in the European Union, according to a study of female lung cancer mortality in 33 countries published in the latest issue of Lung Cancer.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer among women in many countries in the European Union, specifically Denmark, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and the U.K. This is in contrast with men, where lung cancer mortality has declined by 17% from a peak in 1988 to the early 2000s.
While public health experts do not expect that the mortality rate will ever reach the predicted 2012 level of 37.2 per 100,000, Dr. Cristina Bosetti of the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri" department of epidemiology in Milan and co-authors decided to assess recent trends (Lung Cancer, December 2012, Vol. 78:3, pp. 171-178).
They determined from 2000 to 2009 mortality rates increased from 11.3 per 100,000 in 2000 to 12.7 per 100,000 in 2009. Middle-aged women between 35 and 64 years of age had a higher mortality rate, from 18.6 to 21.5 per 100,000 during this time frame.
The authors analyzed data from a World Health Organization (WHO) database of official death certification for lung cancer of women from 1970 through 2009. In addition to conducting analyses by country, they also evaluated mortality for five-year age groups, such as 20-24 years.
The countries with the lowest overall lung cancer mortality rates during the 2005-2009 time period were in Belarus, Malta, the Russian Federation, and the Ukraine, at less than 6 per 100,000 women. The countries with the highest rates were Scotland and Denmark at 30 per 100,000 women. Lung cancer is still expanding in countries of Western and Southern Europe, particularly in France, Portugal, and Spain -- the result of smoking habits in the 1980s and 1990s.
Noting that lung cancer mortality in European women is still lower compared with women living in the U.S., the authors predict that among younger women the trend in increasing mortality rates will begin to diminish as the effect of antismoking campaigns are felt.
