Women who smoke have a 25% higher risk of developing coronary heart disease and having a heart attack than men, even if they smoke fewer cigarettes per day, according to a study published in The Lancet magazine. For every year a woman smokes the risk increases by 2%.
To reach this conclusion, Rachel Huxley of the University of Minnesota and Mark Woodward of Johns Hopkins University analyzed data on more than 4 million people from 86 international studies. The analysis also revealed that female smokers have twice the risk of lung cancer than male smokers . According to the authors, this difference is due to the fact that the female body extracts more carcinogens and other toxic chemicals present in tobacco smoke from the same number of cigarettes.
