Study Suggests Smoking Increases Risk of Advanced Kidney Cancer

Smoking increases risk of developing advanced kidney cancer, a new study suggests. Quitting smoking can reduce the risk, the researchers found.

Doctors from Duke University Medical Center studied 845 patients who had surgery for kidney cancer. They found that current and former smokers were 1.5 to 1.6 times more likely to have advanced kidney cancer, compared with nonsmokers, HealthDay reports. The more a person smoked, the greater the risk of developing advanced kidney cancer.

Quitting smoking reduced the risk of developing advanced kidney cancer by 9 percent for every 10 years that a person was smoke-free, the researchers reported at the American Urological Association Annual Meeting.