Women fear breast cancer far more than any other illness though lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in women.

Women's continuing high concern about breast cancer is "a testament to the education of women" by many advocacy groups, says Sherry Marts, vice president for scientific affairs at the Society for Women's Health Research, a nonprofit organization in the nation's capital.

"We would like to raise women's awareness of heart-disease risk to the same level," she says. Roughly 10 times more women will die of heart disease than breast cancer in 2005, and this year more than 73,000 women are expected to die of lung cancer — 30,000 more than are expected to die from breast cancer.

The research group, which conducted its survey in June, asked more than 1,000 adult U.S. women which diseases they feared most.

About 10 percent named heart disease, which includes heart attack, hypertension and other heart-related diseases, except stroke — nearly double the 5.3 percent of women who did so in an identical 2002 survey.

In comparison, about 22.1 percent of women listed breast cancer as the disease they fear most, virtually unchanged from the prior survey.

One area where more education is clearly needed pertains to HIV/AIDS risk, Marts says.

The survey found a drop in concern among women, down from 11.3 percent in 2002 to 9.3 percent in 2005 — and an even steeper drop among Southern women to 8.8 percent.

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that women in the South make up 76 percent of new HIV infections in the United States, while they represent just 30 percent of the nation's population, said Phyllis Greenberger, president of the society.

"Our survey should strengthen calls for greater education on HIV and AIDS and greater access to care," she says.