Smoking behavior among women has changed considerably for the worse over the past 40 years
According to a Special Article published in New England Journal of Medicine, women smokers today smoke more like men than women in previous generations. Women begin smoking earlier in adolescence and, until recently, smoked more cigarettes per day than men. Therefore, female smokers have a much greater risk of death from lung cancer and chronic obstructive lung disease (COLD) than did female smokers 20 or 40 years ago.
Researchers, in an effort to determine if these changing patterns have caused women’s risk to equal that of men, measured 50-year trends in mortality related to smoking across 3 time periods (1959-1965, 1982-1988, and 2000-2010). Led by Michael J. Thun, MD, researchers compared 5 large contemporary studies with 2 historical American Cancer Society cohorts. In all, more than 2.2 million adults aged 55 years and older were included in the study.
Study results showed:
- In the 1960s, a woman who smoked had a risk of dying of lung cancer that was 2.7 times higher than that of never-smokers
- In the 2000-2010 time period, this risk increased to 25.7 times higher than that of never-smokers
- In the 1960s, a woman who smoked had a risk of dying of COLD that was 4.0 times higher than that of never-smokers
- In the 2000-2010 time period, the risk was 22.5 times higher than never-smokers
- For both conditions, about half of the increase in risk occurred during the last 20 years
”The steep increase in risk among female smokers has continued for decades after the serious health risks from smoking were well established, and despite the fact that women predominantly smoked cigarette brands marketed as lower in ‘tar’ and nicotine,” said Thun. “So not only did the use of cigarette brands marketed as ‘Light’ and ‘Mild’ fail to prevent a large increase in risk in women, it also may have exacerbated the increase in deaths from chronic obstructive lung disease in male smokers, since the diluted smoke from these cigarettes is inhaled more deeply into the lungs of smokers to maintain the accustomed absorption of nicotine.”
Study results also reinforced that quitting smoking is far more effective than reducing the number of cigarettes smoked and that quitting smoking at any age dramatically lowers mortality from all major diseases caused by smoking. In fact, researchers found that smokers who quit by age 40 avoided nearly all of the excess smoking-related mortality from lung cancer and COLD.
Source: ACS.