This week, Drs.

The following is the edited transcript and figures from a webinar presentation made by Dr. Heather Wakelee, medical oncologist and Associate Professor at Stanford Cancer Center, on Never-Smokers and Gender Differences in Lung Cancer.

Let's move to biological differences of risk of lung cancer between men and women.

One of my areas of interest is studying gender-related differences in lung cancer. Earlier this year, I wrote a post about interesting data that had come out of the Women’s Health Initiative study. This was the landmark study that established that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for postmenopausal women did more harm than good. When originally presented in 2002, the investigators noted significantly increased risks of

The role of hormones in the development and progression of lung cancer in women has generated much interest. Unfortunately, a lot of the data to date has been observational, which doesn't establish a "cause and effect" relationship. The Nurses Health Study (more on this below) is a good example: a large cohort of women was observed over time. The women completed questionaires on all sorts of exposures (diet, hormone replacement therapy, tobacco, etc), and they were followed over time.

When I joined GRACE earlier this month, a question was posed by a reader regarding whether there is an increasing frequency of the diagnosis of lung cancer in women who have never smoked. This is a very interesting question that those of us who specialize in lung cancer frequently wonder about.