BACKGROUND:

The International Lung Cancer Consortium (ILCCO) was established in 2004, based on the collaboration of research groups leading large molecular epidemiology studies of lung cancer that are ongoing or have been recently completed. This framework offered the opportunity to investigate the role of tobacco smoking in the development of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma (BAC), a rare form of lung cancer.

METHODS:

Our pooled data comprised seven case-control studies from the United States, with detailed information on tobacco smoking and histology, which contributed 799 cases of BAC and 15,859 controls. We estimated the odds ratio of BAC for tobacco smoking, using never smokers as a referent category, after adjustment for age, sex, race, and study center.

RESULTS:

The odds ratio of BAC for ever smoking was 2.47 (95% confidence interval [CI] 2.08, 2.93); the risk increased linearly with duration, amount, and cumulative cigarette smoking and persisted long after smoking cessation. The proportion of BAC cases attributable to smoking was 0.47 (95% CI 0.39, 0.54).

CONCLUSIONS:

This analysis provides a precise estimate of the risk of BAC for tobacco smoking.