Healthcare

Smoking is a very strong risk factor for the occurrence of death risk due to cardiovascular disease (CVD) and other illnesses.

However, smoking also has an appetite suppressant effect that may prevent the occurrence of overweight or obesity that may associated with CVD risk and other diseases.

A recent study found that women who never smoke tend to overweight or obesity than smoker women.
As a result, they also found that those women are at increased risk of early death from CVD and other illnesses, especially on poor families.

This findings based on investigation among 3613 women who had never smoked from a total of 15,000 men and women of the west-central Scotland were recruited to the Refrew and Paisley Study between 1972 and 1976 (aged 45 to 64 years) and followed-up to 28 years.

According to the study authors, Laurence Gruer, MD, FRCP, Director of Public Health Science, NHS Health Scotland, and colleagues, the never-smoke women tend to have obesity regardless of social class. The risk more prevalent in nonsmokers for all occupational classes, except for low occupational classes which showed similar results in both of groups.

Interestingly in this population, obesity looks replace smoking for the risk of early death.

According to the findings, during 28-years follow-up, 50% of subjects were died which 51% of them caused by CVD and 27% by cancer.
Overall, the higher all-cause mortality rates in the lower occupational groups were largely explained by higher rates of obesity, as well as higher systolic blood pressure and poorer lung function.

Although this findings showed that obesity can plays significantly for the risk of early death caused its relationship with CVD and other diseases, the researchers cautions that smoking still strong factor for those risk in general, as long as they can maintain and control their weight.