Healthy Lifestyle

Dana Reeve, a non-smoker and the widow of late actor Christopher Reeve, has lung cancer.

While most lung cancers occur among smokers, last week, non-smoker, Dana Reeve, the widow of Superman star Christopher Reeve, disclosed that she was being treated for the disease. Her announcement came days after ABC news anchor Peter Jennings, a smoker, died of lung cancer at age 67.

They share the most common cancer in the world, but that’s where the similarity ends. Both have different smoking histories, and, while lung cancer is the most prominent form of cancer among males in the world, it is not so for women, especially nonsmokers.

But while the phenomenon of women non-smokers developing lung cancer may be rare in the West, it is not so unusual in Asia, said Dr Toh Chee Keong, an associate consultant with the National Cancer Centre
Singapore (NCCS). In countries such as Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, said Dr Toh, there are more reports of women non-smokers developing lung cancer (nonsmall cell type) than in the West.

But the reason behind this continues to baffle the medical community. In Singapore, lung cancer affected about 5,000 people between 1998 and 2002, according to statistics from the Singapore Cancer Registry. Statistics from the Singapore General Hospital and the NCCS revealed that, out of every 400 to 500 patients that seek treatment for lung cancer (non-small cell type), 30 per cent are non-smokers. Out of this percentage of non-smokers, 70 per cent are women.

Doctors still do not know why non-smokers develop lung cancer, since smoking is usually the primary cause of the
cancer. But Dr Toh said that some possible explanations, other than passive smoking, could be prolonged exposure to other environmental carcinogens (cancer-causing substances), or simply a case of genes.

However, non-smokers do have one silver lining: In advanced cases of lung cancer, they tend to respond better to
treatment than smokers. “This is probably because mutations found in the tumours of non-smokers tend to make it more sensitive towards the drugs than smokers,” said Dr Toh.

People who get lung cancer early in life also have it slightly easier as they are better able to tolerate their cancer treatment. However, this does not mean that their chances of recovery are any higher as lung cancer recovery is dependent on when it is detected.