Anti Depression Guide

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the world. The disease can be cured if caught and removed early enough, but the 10-year survival rate in the US is less than 5 per cent, much lower than in many other forms of cancer.

Ruth Katz, a cancer specialist at the University of Texas in Houston, says this is mainly because physicians lack the tools to spot lung cancer in its earliest stages, unlike cancers of the breast, colon and prostate, for which early diagnosis is much easier.

One way to spot the disease in its early stages is to screen people at risk: smokers, for example, who have long been known to be predisposed to lung cancer. But smoking, by itself, doesn't always trigger the disease.

Now Katz and colleague Feng Jiang have identified a number of genes that predispose smokers to lung cancer. They propose screening smokers for the presence of these genes, and if a person has those genes as well as other indications of early stage cancer, they can be treated and advised to give up smoking.

More controversially, Katz and Jiang suggest that a similar a set of tests could indicate that a smoker is not predisposed to cancer and may therefore be able to continue their habit safely.

See the full lung cancer predisposition test patent application.