Smokers face increased risk of stomach and gullet cancer

Almaty. April 1. Kazakhstan Today - A new research has found that smokers are at great risk of stomach and gullet cancer and at even higher risk after they quit smoking, Kazakhstan Today reports.

Smoking doubles the chance of cancer of the stomach or oesophagus, research has found, The Daily Mail reported.

And the risk remains high even after quitting, according to Italian researchers, who combined the results of dozens of past studies.

They found that current smokers were more than twice as likely as non-smokers to develop cancer in their oesophagus - the gullet - or in a part of the stomach called the gastric cardia.

In some of the studies, the risk of oesophageal cancer remained high even when people had quit smoking three decades earlier.

There are an estimated 7,000 cases of oesophageal cancer diagnosed in the UK each year, while 8,200 are diagnosed with gastric cancer.

In recent decades rates of the cancers, both known as adenocarcinomas, have been rising in the U.S. and Europe - possibly related to growing rates of obesity.

Smoking has long been considered a risk factor for the two cancers. But these latest findings offer a 'better quantification' of the risks, said senior researcher Dr Eva Negri, of the Institute of Pharmacological Research in Milan.

Importantly, they highlight that the risks remain higher than average for some time after smokers quit.

'Stopping smoking is highly beneficial at any age, but it appears that for these cancers the risk decreases only slowly,' Dr Negri said.

For their study, published in the journal Epidemiology, the team pooled the results of 33 previous studies.

In most of them, researchers had compared a relatively small group of patients with either oesophagus or gastric cardia tumors against a cancer-free group.

In three studies, researchers had followed large groups of adults over time, charting any new cases of oesophageal or gastric cardia cancers.

Overall, Negri's team found, current smokers had more than double the odds of developing either of the cancers, compared to people who had never smoked.

And while that risk declined after people stopped smoking, it was still 62 per cent higher in former smokers than in lifelong non-smokers. In some studies, the extra risk of oesophagus cancer persisted up to 30 years after people had quit.

According to the American Cancer Society, the average American has a one in 200 chance of developing any type of oesophageal cancer over a lifetime, and a one in 114 risk of developing some form of stomach cancer.

By comparison, the odds of developing lung cancer are about one in 13 for men, and one in 16 for women - counting both smokers and non-smokers. Smokers would be at much greater risk than lifelong non-smokers.

Lung cancer, heart disease and other ills are 'numerically more important' than oesophageal and gastric cardia cancers when it comes to the health consequences of smoking, Dr Negri noted.

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