the lung cancer could lie dormant for two decades in former smokers before cancer cells wake up and develop into an aggressive form of the disease. This is what researchers at the London Cancer Research Institute have discovered, who hope that this discovery will encourage the implementation of an earlier screening policy.
Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer. Indeed, two out of three patients with lung cancer are diagnosed with an advanced form of the disease and less than one in 10 survives, 5 years after treatment.
Sleeping cells in ex-smokers
This London study involved 7 patients (smokers, ex-smokers and non-smokers) with lung cancer. She found that cells that started mutating when the patient smoked could go to sleep for almost 20 years and suddenly wake up, even when the patient quit smoking.
“This discovery underscores the need for better ways to detect lung cancer earlier, when it is still evolving,” said Professor Jones, director of the Institute for Research on Cancer. “If we could nip the disease in the bud before it started to progress into an aggressive form, then we could significantly improve the survival rate.”
In France, the lung is the second most common cancer site, in terms of incidence, in men (27,000 cases per year) and the third most frequent cancer in women (10,000 cases).
