Young Women in Lung Cancer Alert

WOMEN smokers were given a stark lung cancer warning yesterday.

Not only are they far more likely than men to develop the killer disease, but it hits them at a younger age and after fewer cigarettes.

The new research findings raise the prospect of a lung cancer epidemic among the increasing numbers of young women who smoke. U.S. scientists established that women are genetically much more vulnerable to lung cancer.

The study also found what is believed to be the first evidence that nicotine triggers the cancer mechanism.

'This is a wakeup call for women who smoke, particularly teenagers,' said Dr Sharon Shriver, one of the research team at the University of Pittsburgh.

'The message is that they should stop, or, better yet, never start.' The discovery has huge implications for women's health.

Smoking rates among young women have actually increased in recent years and teenage girls are now a third more likely than boys to start the habit.

In some parts of Britain lung cancer is already the most common cause of cancer death among women.

The Pittsburgh researchers examined lung tissue samples from both men and women for

a protein called GRPR, which drives the growth of cancers.

The scientists found GRPR in 55 per cent of non-smoking women and 75 per cent of those with fewer than 25 pack-years of smoking (a pack-year is one pack of 20 cigarettes smoked each day for a year).

In contrast, none of the male non-smokers and only 20 per cent of those with 25 pack-years or fewer were producing the protein, according to a report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The difference comes because the GRPR gene is carried on the X chromosome, of which women have two and men only one. Although such duplicate genes are normally inactive, GRPR may be an exception.

The gene plays a key role in lung development but is inactive in adults unless stimulated by something like cigarette smoke.

Dr Shriver said: 'Women may be at increased risk because they have two copies of the gene that are inducible by nicotine, while men only have one.

Another possibility is that one GRPR gene in women is chronically active, even before exposure to nicotine.