Estrogen and lung cancer link

Cigarette smoke causes in the lungs of female mice, additional hormone degradation. And thus a higher risk of lung cancer.

Female hormones are sometimes bad things anyway. Besides all the physical discomfort that some women experience around their menstruation or menopause, the hormone estrogen plays an important role in breast cancer. Meanwhile evidence accumulates on the same hormone that is important in the onset and severity of a different kind of cancer: lung cancer.

It suggests that estrogen and lung cancer are linked to each other was for a while, because cancer often runs in heavier women receive hormone therapy. U.S. scientists encountered during research on mice by chance that the mechanism probably behind it. They found that in female mice, they were exposed to cigarette smoke, a number of genes in the lungs were more active. This caused a lot of estrogen in their lungs was demolished. And it's exactly the breakdown of estrogen that can cause cancer or worse.

The cancer researchers presented their findings today at the annual conference of the American Association for Cancer Research. They see in their genmechanisme discovered an explanation for the fact that women with lung cancer has increased in recent decades. Even among women who only meerookten.