Male and female smokers get lung cancer at about the same rate, but female nonsmokers appear to be more susceptible to one type of the disease than their male counterparts, HealthDay News reported June 13.

National Cancer Institute researchers found that 1.47 percent of male smokers and 1.21 percent of female smokers between the ages of 50 and 71 developed lung cancer. Smokers who consumed similar numbers of cigarettes developed the disease at similar rates regardless of gender, according to the report from Neal Freedman and colleagues.

"The conclusion reached that women are more or less susceptible to lung cancer goes back to the adage, 'Women who smoke like men die like men,'" said Thomas Glynn, the American Cancer Society's senior director of international tobacco control. "This study shows that women who smoked like men get lung cancer like men."

However, female nonsmokers were 1.3 times more likely to get adenocarcinoma, a type of lung cancer, than nonsmoking men.

The findings were published in the July 2008 edition of The Lancet Oncology.