According to the January 10 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), lung cancer incidence rates declined for U.S. men and women between 2005 and 2009.  MMWR is a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  This report represents the latest CDC data publicly available on lung cancer incidence.  MMWR specifically found that lung cancer declined in all age groups for men, except for males under the age of 35.  For women, lung cancer incidence declined only for the 35-44 and 54-64 age groups.  Overall, male lung cancer incidence showed a more rapid decline than female.

An analysis of this new data, published in Reuters, stated that the lung cancer rate dropped by 2.6 percent per year among men and 1.1 percent per year among women, between 2005 and 2009.  The largest decline was seen in adults aged 35 to 44, with a 6.4 percent drop per year among men and a 5.9 percent decrease for women in that age group.  This is significant and reflects a shift in smoking behaviors in the U.S.

More than half of American men and over a third of women were smokers on January 11, 1964, when Dr. Luther Terry delivered the Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health outlining the links between tobacco use, lung cancer and death.  Over the 50 years since that report was released, smoking prevalence has been cut in half.  As prevalence continues to decline, so should the adverse health impacts related to smoking.

Across the world, China is seeing the opposite trend in lung cancer.  Health officials from Beijing announced in November 2013 that rates of lung cancer are on the rise in Beijing, reported Xinhua News.  In 2011, there were nearly 8,000 new cases of lung cancer, which accounted for approximately one-fifth of all malignant tumor cases that year.  For every 100,000 people, there were 63.09 lung cancer patients in 2011.  In comparison, in 2002, that rate was 39.56 per 100,000 people.

Despite progress, WebMD reports that lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. in both men and women.  It is also one of the most preventable kinds of cancer.  At least four out of five cases are associated with cigarette smoking, and the cause-and-effect relationship has been extensively documented in scientific literature.  A National Monitor article published earlier this month reported that tobacco control efforts have been credited with saving eight million lives.