FEV₁ AND RISK OF LUNG CANCER

As Wasswa-Kintu and colleagues point out in their paper in this issue of Thorax, 328 million people died of lung cancer in the world in the year 2000 and lung cancer is the most lethal cancer in the world. Patients with markedly reduced lung function have a higher risk of lung cancer and, in this month’s Thorax, these authors investigate in a systematic review whether milder reductions in FEV₁ are also associated with an increased risk from lung cancer. When the highest quintile of FEV₁ (>100% predicted) was compared with the lowest quintile (<70% predicted), the lowest quintile was associated with an increased risk of lung cancer in men and particularly in women. The authors also found that women were twice as likely as men to develop lung cancer for …