COPD at lung cancer diagnosis less prevalent in women

[unseennude]

Among patients newly diagnosed with lung cancer, the presence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is significantly lower among women than among their male counterparts investigators in New York report. They therefore suggest that "stratification of high-risk patients based on the presence of COPD may miss a significant proportion of women with lung cancer."

Dr. Raghu S. Loganathan and colleagues note the concomitant increase in lung cancer deaths in women and the decrease in men over the last decade. However, there has been very little research into the gender-based association of COPD at the time of lung cancer diagnosis.

They therefore evaluated records of 294 patients diagnosed with primary lung cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center between 1995 and 1997, and who underwent pulmonary function tests close to the time of diagnosis. According to the report in the May issue of Chest, patients were considered to have COPD when the FEV1/FVC ratio was less than 70% according to spirometry.

Roughly half of the patients were women. At the time of diagnosis, 52.4% of women and 72.8% of men had COPD. After adjusting for age, gender, and smoking status, there was still a significantly lower prevalence among women (odds ratio 0.44, p = 0.002).

Histology, pathologic stage and age were not significantly associated with COPD prevalence.

"These data provide further evidence that there are gender-based differences among various risk factors associated with the development of lung cancer," the authors write.