Association Between Hormonal Factors and Risk of Lung and Upper Aerodigestive Tract Cancer in French Women: The E3N Prospective Cohort Study.

Summary: Men and women get lung and throat cancers at different rates, and scientists wonder if female hormones are the reason. In a huge study of over 91,000 French women, researchers looked at how hormone events—like periods and pregnancies—affect cancer risk. They found that women with very short menstrual cycles (24 days or less) had a higher chance of getting lung cancer, even if they never smoked. On the flip side, women who never smoked but had three or more pregnancies had a much lower risk of getting throat or mouth cancer. This suggests that having more estrogen might protect against throat cancer, but lung cancer works differently.