Cigarette smoking cannot fully explain the epidemiologic characteristics of lung cancer in Taiwanese women, who smoke rarely but have lung cancer relatively often. In a previous study, the authors suspected that exposure to fumes from cooking oils was an important risk factor for lung cancer in Taiwanese women nonsmokers in the Republic of China. In a new case-control study conducted in 1993-1996, they further explored the association of oil fumes with lung cancer in women. Two sets of controls were used concurrently. The subjects were 131 nonsmoking incident cases with newly diagnosed and histologically confirmed primary carcinoma of the lung, 252 hospital controls hospitalized for causes unrelated to diseases of smoking, and 262 community controls; all controls were women nonsmokers matched by age and date of interview. Details on cooking conditions and habits were collected, in addition to other epidemiologic data. Lung cancer risk increased with the number of meals per day to about threefold for women who cooked these meals each day. The risk was also greater if women usually waited until fumes were emitted from the cooking oil before they began cooking (adjusted odds ratios = 2.0-2.6) and if they did not use a fume extractor (adjusted odds ratios = 3.2-12.2). These results suggest that a proportion of lung cancer may be attributable to the habit of waiting until the cooking oil has been heated to a high temperature before cooking the food.

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a known risk factor for pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). This study aimed to determine if type 2 DM alters manifestations and treatment outcome of PTB. Records of 217 consecutive culture-proven PTB patients were analysed retrospectively. The manifestations and treatment outcomes of 74 patients with type 2 DM (PTB-DM group) were compared to 143 patients without DM (PTB group). PTB-DM patients showed higher frequencies of fever, haemoptysis, positive acid-fast bacilli sputum smears, and consolidation, cavity, and lower lung field lesions on chest radiographs, and higher mortality rate. Furthermore, type 2 DM, age 65 years, and extensive radiographic disease were factors independently associated with an unfavorable outcome. This study confirmed that clinical manifestations and chest radiographs of PTB patients associated with type 2 DM significantly depart from the typical presentation. Type 2 DM seems to have a negative effect on treatment outcome of PTB.

In this prospective phase III trial, afatinib combined with paclitaxel improved progression-free survival and objective response, compared with single-agent chemotherapy, in patients with NSCLC who were clinically enriched for ErbB dependency having failed platinum-based chemotherapy, gefitinib/erlotinib and afatinib monotherapy after initial benefit on each tyrosine kinase inhibitor.