Researchers have discovered that a rising proportion of women with no smoking history are dying to lung cancer. Although a research paper published in December maintains that smoking of cigarettes is still the greatest precedent to Lung Cancer, 20% of women and 9% of men diagnosed with Lung Cancer recently have no smoking history.
There is also the fact that a lower proportion of people smoke today than in previous decades, nut in all there is a greater risk for non-smokers to develop lung cancer than in previous generations, especially women non-smokers, who stand a 50% higher risk factor of developing lung cancer than their male counterparts.
Sadly, for non-smokers the drugs that attack the lung cancer cells have been found to be less effective in non-smokers because non-smokers tend to have fewer mutations and are therefore ignored by the drugs.
As a result, there is a growing conversation around creating targeted drugs for the growing proportion of individuals with a no-smoking history to help fight the trend.
Also, further research is underway to find the underlying cause for the growing cases of Lung Cancer in Non-smokers.