Younger people with advanced lung cancer who quit smoking more than a year before their diagnosis survive longer than those who continue smoking, according to a new study.

It's known that people who never smoked are more likely to survive the disease than those who light up. But whether former smokers do any better than current ones has been less clear.

"The findings do suggest there is some benefit to quitting smoking," said Amy Ferketich of Ohio State University College of Public Health in Columbus, who worked on the study.

However, quitters who were older or who had earlier stages of lung cancer did not have an advantage over smokers, she and her colleagues report in the journal Cancer.

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