A new study reveals that people with asthma are nearly 60 per cent more likely to develop lung cancer.

The previous evidence of a link between asthma and lung cancer has been conflicting, but a large scale prospective study carried out in Sweden has shed new light on this question. Researchers at the University of Uppsala and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm have followed over 90,000 people for over 30 years, identifying those who had been hospitalised for asthma at the start of the study.

Over time, those with asthma were 58 per cent more likely to develop lung cancer than those without asthma. For women, the increased risk was 78 per cent, for men 51 per cent. The reason for the link is unclear - the study does not prove that asthma causes lung cancer. The researchers wonder if the inflammatory process underlying asthma also predisposes to cancer. Or there may be some common genetic factor that predisposes to both conditions. Another possibility is that environmental factors - tobacco smoke in particular - trigger both asthma and cancer.

Source

European Respiratory Journal January 2002