Lori Sakoda, PhD, MPH, Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine Associate Professor of Health Systems Science, co-authored “Sociodemographic and clinical characteristics associated with never-smoking status in patients with lung cancer: findings from a large integrated health system,” published in the October 2022 issue of Translational Cancer Research. Because lung cancer is a leading cause in cancer-related death, and lung cancer mortality is increasing for those who have never smoked, Sakoda and her co-authors sought to find more evidence on a cross-section of patient populations.
The study of 17,939 ethnically and socioeconomically diverse adult patients from Kaiser Permanente Northern California included persons aged 30 or older with lung cancer, 48.5 percent (8,698) of whom had adenocarcinoma, a type of cancer that forms in the glandular tissue, which lines certain internal organs and makes and releases substances in the body, such as digestive juices, mucus, and other fluids. This form of cancer is primarily caused by tobacco use and toxin exposure.
The researchers showed that “patterns of never-smoking status associated with sociodemographic and clinical characteristics are different across sex and race/ethnicity among patients with lung cancer.” The data is “critical to increasing awareness and expediting diagnosis of this disease,” they concluded.
Read the article here .
