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Sunday, February 10, 2013

Study: Smoking Can Take At Least Ten Years Off Life Expectancy.


Two studies on smoking and mortality published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine received significant coverage from print and online news sources, and from two national news broadcasts. One study was led by Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, while the other study was led by Michael J. Thun of the American Cancer Society. Both studies found that quitting smoking helped to reduce the risk of death associated with smoking - a point that most reports focused on. Additionally, much of the coverage discussed the finding that women are now as likely to die from smoking-related illnesses as men.
        NBC Nightly News (1/23, story 10, 0:25, Williams) reported, "good news and bad news on the smoking front. From the New England Journal of Medicine, they state flat out, smokers lose at least one decade of life expectancy over nonsmokers on average."
        CBS Evening News (1/23, story 9, 0:25, Pelley) reported, "A new study is finding that smoking is taking a much greater toll on women than it used to."
        USA Today Share to FacebookShare to Twitter (1/23, Payne) reports that one of the studies found that "people who smoke take at least 10 years off their life expectancy." The article adds, "on the other hand, those who kick the habit before age 40 reduce the excess risk of death associated with continued smoking by about 90%, according to the study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine." According to USA Today, "the study examined data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey between 1997 and 2004."
        In its "Well" blog, the New York Times Share to FacebookShare to Twitter (1/23, O'Connor) quotes Dr. Tim McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Public Health, as saying that the findings "paint a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off - and that's just on average."
        The Washington Post Share to FacebookShare to Twitter (1/24, Vastag) reports that the other study found that "smoking-related deaths among women have soared in recent decades. For the first time since research on smoking and health began in the 1950s, the rate of smoking-related deaths is now nearly equal between male and female smokers."
        The Los Angeles Times Share to FacebookShare to Twitter (1/24, Khan) reports that "in the early 1960s, women smokers were 2.73 times more likely to die from lung cancer than their nonsmoking counterparts; by 2010, they were 25.66 times more likely to die of the disease, Thun found."

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