Dana Reeve, the widow of Christopher Reeve, has been diagnosed with lung cancer. But she doesn‘t fit the typical profile of a lung cancer patient; she is 20 to 30 years younger than most who get the disease, and she has never smoked.
The number of nonsmokers with lung cancer is growing, especially among women. Right now, 10 percent of men with lung cancer have never smoked, but 20 percent of women who have the illness are nonsmokers.
Possible causes may include:
- Greater susceptibility to carcinogens
- Secondhand smoke
- Radon gas
- Genetic predisposition
Lung cancer kills about 15,000 non-smoking women each year, and the disease remains as deadly now as it did 30 years ago. Only about 15 percent of lung cancer patients survive as long as five years,