Lung cancer in women emerges as a distinct disease

When Narjust Florez’s mother told her physicans that she had problems with her vision, they dismissed them as being due to cataracts. They were wrong. Florez’s mother had lung cancer, which had spread to her eyes. Despite her repeated medical visits and being highly educated and fully insured, her cancer was repeatedly missed. “My mum is a lawyer and still being gaslighted,” says Florez. “Imagine what it must be like for a regular person.” Florez, a physician-scientist at the Dana- Farber Institute in Boston, Massachusetts who specializes in lung cancer in young people and women, has collected many similar stories. Studies show not only that women are routinely being diagnosed too late, but also describe lung cancer in women as an epidemic in some populations 1 . Yet lung cancer is still generally considered a disease of men. Nature Outlook: Lung cancer “When we talk about lung cancer, we always think about it as a disease of men, but actually there are more women with lung cancer than men,” says Daniela Molena, who studies lung cancer in women at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City. Molena and other researchers suggest that lung cancer in women should be seen as a distinct disease, one driven by a complex interplay of biological sex differences and gender-based factors that researchers and clinicians have mainly overlooked. …