Cigarettes increase risk of heart attacks

Press, 23 November 1987, Page 37

Cigarettes increase risk of heart attacks

NZPA-AP Boston Smoking causes about half of all heart attacks among young and middleaged American women, and even three or four cigarettes a day sharply increase the risk, research concludes. Until a few years ago, many experts believed cigarettes did not contribute to heart disease in women. Recent studies have concluded that smoking is an important hazard for women, as it is for men. The latest research, based on the Nurses i Health Study, concludes no level of smoking can be considered safe.

Women who smoke fewer than five cigarettes a day have two to three times the heart disease risk of non-smokers. The study demonstrated the overwhelming risk of smoking for coronary heart disease in young and middle-aged women, said the study’s director, Dr Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health. “It looks like cigarette smoking can account for approximately 50 per cent of the total number of cases of coronary heart disease in that group.” The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, adds to the evidence against

smoking. Cigarettes cause lung cancer and emphysema for both sexes and in women they are linked to cervical cancer, early menopause, and damage to the foetus during pregnancy.

About 46 per cent of fatal coronary disease and 54 per cent of non-fatal heart attacks in women can be attributed to cigarette use.

Among women smoking more than 25 cigarettes a day, 81 per cent of deaths from coronary heart disease are caused by smoking. Even the lightest smokers, those who used between one and four

cigarettes a day, were 2.4 times more likely than non-smokers to have heart disease. The risk rises dramatically if smokers also have other risk factors for heart disease. For instance, both diabetic smokers and those with high blood pressure were 22 times more likely than nonsmokers to have coronary heart disease.

When women stopped smoking, their increased risk of heart disease returned to normal. The Nurses Health Study is following the diets and living habits of 119,404 American nurses. When the study began in 1976, they ranged in age from 30 to 55, and about 30 per cent of them smoked cigarettes, virtually the same as the national average. During the last six years, 65 of the women died of coronary heart disease, and 242 had nonfatal heart attacks.