Lung-damaging effects hit females earlier
Jump to full article: Chicago Sun-Times, 2009-05-19
Intro: It's no secret that smoking isn't a healthy habit for anyone. But a growing body of research suggests women are more vulnerable to the lung-damaging effects of cigarettes than men.
A study presented Monday at the American Thoracic Society's annual meeting in San Diego found that women developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at an earlier age and after fewer years of smoking than men.
Previous studies on lung cancer have also shown that smoking is more likely to cause lung cancer in women than men, even though they tend to start at a later age and smoke less.
"Many people believe that their own smoking is too limited to be harmful -- that a few cigarettes a day represent a minimal risk," said Dr. Inga-Cecilie Soerheim, co-author of the latest study and a research fellow at the Channing Laboratory, a division of Brigham and Young Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. "But there is no such thing as a safe amount of cigarette smoking. Our data suggest that this is particularly true for female smokers."
Soerheim's research team used data from a Norwegian study involving 954 current and ex-smokers with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease -- the catchall name for a group of diseases causing a partial blockage of the airways and strongly linked to smoking.
Jump to full article » |