Cigarette changes more prone to lung cancer: Study

BEIJING, May 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Cigarette smoking is more riskier on the lungs today than it was a few decades ago due to changes in cigarette design, suggests a new study.

Cigarette smoking is more riskier on the lungs today than it was a few decades ago due to changes in cigarette design,  suggests a new study.(File photo)

Up to one-half of U.S. lung cancer cases may be due to those changes, Dr. David Burns of the University of California, San Diego, told a recent meeting of tobacco researchers.

The study found the increase in a kind of lung tumor called adenocarcinoma was higher in the United States than in Australia, even though both countries switched to so-called milder cigarettes at the same time.

"The most likely explanation for it is a change in the cigarette," Burns said in an interview. "Cigarettes sold in Australia contain lower levels of nitrosamines, a known carcinogen, than those sold in the United States."

That's circumstantial evidence that requires more research, he acknowledged.

The study presented at a meeting of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco,a comparison between smoking behaviors of different age groups over four decades - how much they smoked, when they started, when they quit - and how cancer risk changed.

The risk of squamous cell carcinoma stayed about the same over those years, Burns found. But adenocarcinoma rose. It makes up 65 per cent to 70 per cent of newly occurring U.S. lung cancer cases but no more than 40 per cent of Australia's lung cancer, he said.