London:
Smoking is riskier for women, for a new research suggests that females are more vulnerable to the cancer-causing effects of smoking than men.
Nearly 90 per cent of lung cancer cases are result of smoking. The habit is also thought to contribute to a wide range of other cancers, including those of the mouth, gullet, pancreas, stomach, bladder and kidney.
"Our findings suggest that women may have an increased susceptibility to tobacco carcinogens," said Dr Martin Frueh, from St Gallen Canton Hospital in Switzerland.
The research, including a study of 683 lung cancer patients, suggested that women tend to smoke less than men but develop lung cancer earlier.
The research presented at the first European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO) in Lugano, Switzerland, discovered that women tended to be younger than men when they developed the disease, despite, on average, smoking much less than men, the Daily Telegraph reported.
"In the early 1900s lung cancer was reported to be rare in women, but since the 1960s it has progressively reached epidemic proportions, becoming the leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States," Dr Enriqueta Felip, from Val D'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, who co-chaired the meeting, was quoted as saying by the British daily.