Noah McCrory
A Bay Area-based study found that 80% of Asian-American women with lung cancer have never smoked, and researchers are trying to find out why.
Five years ago, Vicky Ni received a call from her doctor. She had just had an X-ray for what she thought was a pinched nerve. The next thing she knew, she was sitting in an oncologist’s office.
“I was there alone and, you know, the word “cancer” came out of the doctor’s mouth, so that’s not good,” Ni said.
She has never smoked a day in her life, but the 48-year-old mother of two was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, the second most common cancer in men and women in the United States.
“I was asking them, like, okay, so how long does the treatment last? And, you know, when do we finish this?” Ni said. “No one had told me until then that it was stage four. So, it was incurable. Basically, I would have to live with this condition for the rest of my life.”
Ni is now 53 years old. The treatments were brutal; they caused high blood pressure and high cholesterol. The cancer has now spread to his abdomen. But it’s not the physical side effects that hurt the most. Ni has two daughters who were 13 and 15 when she was first diagnosed.
A few years ago, Vicky was invited to participate in a research program at the University of California, San Francisco called FANS, which stands for Women, Asian, Non-Smokers. Launched 15 years ago by Dr. Scarlett Gomez and Dr. Iona Cheng, it’s a first-of-its-kind U.S. study into why lung cancer rates were rising among Asian women who never smoked.
“Lung cancer rates have been decreasing over the last few decades,” said Gomez. “The exception to this trend has been among Asian American women, where rates and trends in rates have been rising slightly and rising in recent decades.”
Doctors hope that the FANS study will not only lead to the development of more preventive measures and tests, but also attract the attention of people with financial resources. Right now, less than 1% of National Institutes of Health funding goes to diseases affecting the Asian American community.
“There is a perception that Asians don’t get sick,” Gomez said.
Ni isn’t wasting energy wondering how or why she got lung cancer. Instead, she’s turning her pain into purpose, reaching out to other women like 34-year-old Kit Ho, who Ni recruited to also be part of the FANS study.
“I feel like anything coming from me, if my tissue, if my saliva can help researchers find more drugs or find more ways to identify people early, then I want to be a part of that,” Ho said.
Ho was diagnosed with cancer on Thanksgiving 2023. Doctors discovered four tumors in her brain that they believe are linked to lung cancer. Just like Ni, she never smoked. She is also the mother of two children aged 2 and 4.
Ni is focusing on the things that bring her joy: family, friends, and helping others know that even in their hardest times, they are not alone.
“I want to do everything I can to make this diagnosis meaningful to the world,” Ni said.
Elizabeth Cook
