United States: The health experts found that smoking doesn’t explain why women are more at risk for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Women are approximately 50% more prone than men to develop COPD despite having fewer chances of developing the condition, researchers said in an article published online May 8 in the journal BMJ Open Respiratory Research.
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Tobacco smoking is the leading cause of COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, under the larger umbrella term of chronic breathing problems, such as emphysema and bronchitis, researchers say.
The COPD rate, though, is higher among women, not because they smoke more, but because they smoke less than men do.
The findings contradict the idea that women are more susceptible to tobacco smoke than men, which has been propped up in an attempt to explain why more women have COPD, researchers said.
According to the team lead, Dr. Alexander Steinberg, who is an assistant professor of clinical practice at the University of Washington in Seattle, “The higher risk of COPD in women was not explained by higher susceptibility to cigarette smoke as measured by either smoking status or pack-year exposure,” US News reported.
Furthermore, as the researchers noted, “In fact, women had a nearly identical increase in risk of COPD for every 10 pack-years of cigarette use when compared with men.”
“This then begs the important question of what is driving high rates of COPD among women,” researchers maintained.
For the study, they reviewed responses from over 12,600 women and almost 10,400 men aged 40 and over who were part of the National Health Interview Survey, an annual survey conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to monitor American health.
It was also found that women are far less likely to be current or former smokers, with those women who did smoke even smoking fewer cigarettes a day than men did.
Women were also more likely to have smoked for fewer years and were younger than 15 years of age.