Never smoked? Good, but you could still get lung cancer

A 41-year-old Los Angeles woman experienced sudden right-sided radiating heat and numbness followed by violent muscle convulsions. An initial emergency evaluation dismissed her concerns, but repeat symptoms led her to film the episodes and seek a second physician. An MRI revealed three brain tumors, and surgery removed them. Biopsies unexpectedly showed stage 4 lung cancer. She had never smoked and had no family history. Lung cancer in people who have never smoked is increasingly visible and is considered biologically distinct. It is now a leading global cause of cancer death, and evidence suggests an absolute increase in never-smoker cases. Researchers are working to understand causes and contributing factors.

"“I was in shock,” she says. Nguyen is just 41 years old, has never smoked and has no family history of lung cancer. Yet she is one of a growing number of young Asian women who are developing the disease despite the absence of these risk factors. After decades of viewing lung cancer “almost exclusively as a smoking-related disease”, cases in people who have never smoked are becoming more visible, says Jaclyn LoPiccolo, a thoracic oncologist and researcher at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts."

"“a biologically distinct entity”, she adds. Lung cancer in people who have never smoked is now considered to be the fifth most common cause of cancer death globally. As tobacco smoking declines worldwide, lung cancer clinicians are spending more of their time tending to people who have never smoked, says Charles Swanton, a cancer physician-scientist at the Francis Crick Institute in London. But there is more than a proportional rise going on, he says: evidence also suggests “a genuine absolute increase” in cases of lung cancer in people who have never smoked."

"In July 2025, Lily Nguyen was arranging a vase of flowers at her home in Los Angeles, California, when she felt a “radiating heat and numbness” sweep down the right side of her body. Moments later, she was wracked by violent muscle convulsions. She went to the emergency department, but the physician dismissed her concerns. When the convulsions happened again the next day, Nguyen filmed herself. She showed the footage to a different physician, who sent her for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. The scan revealed three brain tumours."

Read at Nature