Many nonsmokers have lung nodules linked to risk of cancer

Many nonsmokers have lung nodules that have been linked to lung cancer , a new study warns.

About 42% of nonsmokers or former smokers have at least one lung nodule, which is a small mass of dense tissue that may be cancerous, according to chest CT scans performed on more than 10,400 people aged 45 and older.

Further, about 11% of participants had larger lung nodules measuring 6 to 8 millimeters that will require close medical scrutiny, researchers said.

"This was higher than we expected and even similar to the prevalence reported in high-risk populations of smokers," said senior researcher Dr. Rozemarijn Vliegenthart , a professor of cardiothoracic imaging at the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands.

The older people are, the greater their odds of having both more lung nodules and larger nodules, results showed.

Men were more likely than women to both have lung nodules and have multiple nodules, researchers noted.

Most of the lung nodules weren't cancerous, Vliegenthart stressed.

"The incidence of lung cancer in this population is very low, 0.3%, suggesting that most of the clinically relevant and even actionable nodules in a nonsmoking cohort are benign," Vliegenthart said in a university news release.

However, their presence will require follow-up scans and examination under current cancer screening guidelines, the researchers said.

The new study was published Tuesday in the journal Radiology.

These results indicate that the cancer screening guidelines, which are mostly based on data from smokers, might lead to many unnecessary follow-up examinations in people with low risk for lung cancer, the research team concluded.

It will be important to update these guidelines, given that smoking has been on the decline in Western nations, researchers said.

"This shift makes our study, which provides foundational and comprehensive data on lung nodules in nonsmokers, even more critical," Vliegenthart said in a journal news release.

Besides cancer, lung nodules also can be caused by air pollution, chronic inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis or infectious diseases like tuberculosis, according to the American Lung Association (ALA).

Lung nodules in nonsmokers are often found when a person receives an X-ray or CT scan for some other health problem, such as being in a car accident, the ALA said.

More information

The American Lung Association has more about lung nodules .

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