http://www.health24.com/news/Smoking/1-1250,75083.asp
People regularly exposed to second-hand smoke may have increased risks of dying from various causes, a long-term study from China suggests.
Researchers found that compared with adults who lived and worked in smoke-free environs, those exposed to second-hand smoke were more likely to die of heart disease or lung cancer over 17 years.
And they were also more likely to die of stroke or the lung disease emphysema – two diseases that have had relatively weaker links to second-hand smoke.
The findings, which appear in the medical journal Chest, cannot definitively prove that second-hand smoke is the culprit. But the researchers were able to account for some other key factors, like a person’s age, education, job, and blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
Link between smoke and mortality remain
And the links between second-hand smoke and mortality remained, say the researchers, led by Dr Yao He of Chinese PLA General Hospital in Beijing.
“This is exactly the type of study design you want to see,” said Joanna Cohen, director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
Cohen, who was not involved in the research, pointed out that the study followed people over many years, and it found evidence of a “dose-response” relationship – meaning people’s risks climbed as their second-hand smoke exposure increased.
Those things are considered key in building the case for a cause-and-effect relationship.
Smoke boosts COPD
A number of studies have found that non-smokers who regularly breathe in other people’s tobacco smoke have an increased risk of developing heart disease or certain cancers, including lung tumours.
In the US, the most recent Surgeon General’s report said there was “suggestive” evidence that second-hand smoke might boost people’s risk of stroke and emphysema, also known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD.
But the evidence was considered insufficient to say there was a “causal relationship,” Cohen noted.
“This type of study,” she said, “is important for adding to evidence of a causal relationship.”
Cohen also said it was “huge” that the information was coming from China. “It’s the country with the most number of smokers,” she pointed out. And, she said, it is trailing other nations in anti-smoking education and tobacco control.
Lung cancer deaths higher
The current findings are based on 910 adults who were followed over almost two decades.
At the start, 44% said they lived with a smoker, while 53% said they inhaled second-hand smoke at work.
Over the following years, 249 study participants died. And the risks of death from heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and emphysema were all two to three times higher among people exposed to second-hand smoke.
Men die of stroke
Among men, for example, 11% of the 271 men exposed to second-hand smoke died of stroke. That compared with 6.5% of the 168 men who lived and worked in smoke-free surroundings.
The numbers of people who died of each specific cause were fairly small, which is a limitation.
“When numbers get small,” Cohen said, “it makes it more difficult to get a precise estimate” of risks.
But she said the results do support evidence that second-hand smoke may boost the risks of not only heart disease and certain cancers, but stroke and emphysema as well.
(Amy Norton, Reuters Health, June 2012)
Read more:
How passive smoking hurts
Second hand smoke affects the brain