Lung cancer and cigarette smoking in Europe: An update of risk estimates and an assessment of inter-country heterogeneity
✍ Scribed by Lorenzo Simonato; Antonio Agudo; Wolfgang Ahrens; Ellen Benhamou; Simone Benhamou; Paolo Boffetta; Paul Brennan; Sarah C. Darby; Francesco Forastiere; Cristina Fortes; Valérie Gaborieau; Michael Gerken; Carlos A. Gonzales; Karl-Heinz Jöckel; Michaela Kreuzer; Franco Merletti; Fredrik Nyberg; Göran Pershagen; Hermann Pohlabeln; Franz Rösch; Elise Whitley; Heinz-Erich Wichmann; Paola Zambon
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2001
- Tongue
- French
- Weight
- 81 KB
- Volume
- 91
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0020-7136
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Ten case-control studies have been carried out in 6 European countries to investigate the major risk factors for lung cancer. Carcinogenic effect from cigarette smoke was the most relevant interest in our study, which has included 7,609 cases of lung cancer and 10,431 controls, mainly population based. The results indicate elevated odds ratios (ORs; 23.9 among men and 8.7 among women) with attributable risks exceeding 90% for men and close to 60% for women. A large, and statistically significant, variability of the results across countries was detected after adjusting for the most common confounding variables, and after controlling, at least in part, for the instability of the ORs due to the small number of non-smokers in some of the study subsets. This pattern of lung cancer risk associated with cigarettes smoke, across different European regions, reflects inherent characteristics of the studies as well as differences in smoking habits, particularly calender periods of starting, and it is likely to have been influenced by effect modifiers like indoor radon exposure, occupation, air pollution and dietary habits.