Lung cancer to overtake breast cancer as biggest killer by 2015

Lung cancer will overtake breast cancer to become the biggest killer of European females over the course of the next two to three years.

This is according to quantitative analysis carried out in Italy and Switzerland, which has been published in the Annals of Oncology journal, with the trend attributed to large numbers of women taking up smoking in the 1960s and 1970s.

As a result of this, more cases of lung cancer are being recorded, with the long-term damage of cigarettes having an effect on this generation of women.

Over 1.3 million people are expected to die from cancer this year, including 738,000 men and almost 576,000 women across all 27 nations of the European Union.

Professor Carlo La Vecchia, head of the Department of Epidemiology at the Mario Negri Institute and lead author of the study, believes that there will be almost 89,000 breast cancer deaths, equating to 14.6 per cent per 100,000 women in 2013.

In comparison, it is expected that there will be slightly over 82,500 lung cancer deaths, equating to 14 deaths per 100,000 women.

Professor Fabio Levi, from the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine in Switzerland, which contributed to the research, warned that monitoring tobacco use is vital.

"The key message for EU national governments from this study is tobacco control, particularly among middle-aged men and women - the European generations most heavily exposed to smoking.

"If more people could be helped and encouraged to give up smoking, or not to take it up in the first place, hundreds of thousands of deaths from cancer could be avoided each year in Europe."

However, as fewer young women are taking up smoking in Britain and the rest of Europe, it is expected that the death rate may begin to level off after 2020.

Posted by Neil Clark