Not Just the Lungs

A new study published in Cancer Care and Control has found that there is a link between smoking and skin cancer in women, reports HealthDay's Ellin Holohan. The study, conducted by researchers at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida, says that women who smoked for at least 20 years were twice as likely to develop squamous cell skin cancer as other women, and that women who have squamous cell skin cancer are more likely to have smoked than those who don't have cancer at all. There was no significant association between skin cancer and smoking in men, however. The study's lead author, Dana Rollison, tells Holohan that the reason for the association, and its specificity to women, is unknown, but that it may work a little bit like it does in lung cancer. "Hormonal differences affecting the metabolization of nicotine and the body's ability to repair damage to lung DNA caused by smoking have been noted before, suggesting that the female hormone estrogen may play a role," Holohan says.