Lung cancer deaths rates among U.S. women fell for the first time in 40 years, according to a new report.

The report in Thursday's online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute said the decline came about 10 years after lung cancer deaths in men began to fall, a delay that reflects how women tended to take up smoking later.

Overall, cancer death rates have continued a decline that started in the early 1990s, the authors found.

"Decreases in overall cancer incidence and death rates in nearly all racial and ethnic groups are highly encouraging," they concluded.

Since cancer is mainly a disease of older adults and the population is aging, the number of individuals diagnosed will continue to increase even with declining incidence rates, they noted.

Cancer trends by type

Death rates fell an average of 1.6 per cent a year between 2003 and 2007, the latest data available.

Researchers anticipated women's death rates from lung cancer were declining but were waiting for these five-year trend data to be confident the decline is real, said report co-author Brenda Edwards, a statistician with the National Cancer Institute.

The declining death rates were mostly from gains against leading types of the disease, including colorectal, breast, prostate and, in men, lung cancer.

Among men, incidence of liver, kidney and pancreatic cancer, and melanoma increased over the study period.

For women, incidence of kidney, thyroid and pancreatic cancer, as well as leukemia and melanoma, increased.

Almost 174,000 Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer this year and more than 76,000 will die of it.

Death rates in Canada continue to decline for both men and women, the Canadian Cancer Society reported last year.

With files from The Associated Press