(Press-News.org) Smoking accounts for up to 60% of the gender gap in death rates across Europe, and kills twice as many men as alcohol, reveals research published online in Tobacco Control.
The reasons why women have been outliving men in developed European countries since the mid to late 18th century, in some cases, have been hotly contested.
The gender gap in death rates has sometimes been put down to simple biology, or the fact that women seek out health care more readily than men. But the magnitude and variability of the trends suggests a rather more complex picture, say the authors, who set out to explore this discrepancy in more detail.
They used World Health Organisation figures on death rates among men and women from all causes as well as those attributable to smoking and drinking in 30 European countries for the years closest to 2005.
Smoking related deaths included respiratory tract cancers, coronary artery disease, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Those related to alcohol included cancers of the throat and gullet and chronic liver disease as well as alcoholic psychosis and violence.
The 30 countries included Iceland, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, and several in Western and Eastern Europe, excluding the Russian Federation, and Scandinavia.
The proportion of the discrepancy in death rates for men and women attributable to smoking and alcohol was then calculated for all 30 countries by dividing the gender gap for each cause by the gender gap for all causes.
Deaths from all causes were higher for men than for women, the figures showed, but the excess in male deaths varied considerably across the countries studied, ranging from 188 per 100,000 of the population a year in Iceland to 942 per 100,000 in Ukraine.
Most countries with a gender gap of more than 400 per 100,000 were in Eastern Europe, but elsewhere Belgium, Spain, France, Finland and Portugal had the widest gaps.
There was an eightfold difference between the country with the lowest male death rate attributable to alcohol - Iceland at 29 per 100,000 - and that with the highest - Lithuania at 253 per 100,000.
Deaths related to alcohol were particularly high among men in Eastern European countries, but they were also much higher for women there. Overall, the proportion of deaths attributable to alcohol ranged from 20% to 30%.
But despite large gender differences in alcohol consumption across Europe and the huge variation in alcohol related deaths, these were significantly lower than deaths caused by smoking.
There was a fivefold difference between countries with the lowest male death rates (Iceland at 97 per 100,000) attributable to smoking and those with the highest (Ukraine at 495 per 100,000).
But smoking was behind 40% to 60% of the gender gap in all countries, except Denmark, Portugal and France, where it was lower, and Malta where it was much higher (74%).
"Profound changes in the population level of smoking and in the magnitude of the gender gap in smoking should contribute to smaller gender differences in mortality in the coming decades," say the authors.
"However, the extent to which this is realised will depend on the ways in which other health risk behaviours are patterned by gender," they add, pointing to the continuing uptake of smoking among young people and increases in harmful drinking.
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SAN ANTONIO, Texas, U.S.A. (Jan. 17, 2011) — Eating less during early pregnancy impaired fetal brain development in a nonhuman primate model, researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio reported today.
The researchers found decreased formation of cell-to-cell connections, cell division and amounts of growth factors in the fetuses of mothers fed a reduced diet during the first half of pregnancy. "This is a critical time window when many of the neurons as well as the supporting cells in the brain are born," said Peter Nathanielsz, M.D., Ph.D., ...
Sakhalin Energy Investment Company – part owned by Shell – has announced plans to build a major oil platform near crucial feeding habitat of the Western North Pacific gray whale population.
Only around 130 whales of the critically endangered Western population exist today, and their primary feeding habitat – off Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East – is already besieged by multiple oil and gas exploration and development projects.
The construction and operation of an additional off-shore platform could have numerous negative impacts on the whales, potentially ...
Scientists have identified the first DNA sequence variant common in the population that is not only associated with an increased risk of heart failure, but appears to play a role in causing it.
The variant, a change in a single letter of the DNA sequence, impairs channels that control kidney function.
"It's not a heart gene," says Gerald W. Dorn II, MD, the Philip and Sima K. Needleman Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a lead investigator on the study. "It's a kidney gene. This protein is not even expressed in the heart. ...
STANFORD, Calif. – Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, in collaboration with BioParadox, Inc., have published data supporting the use of platelet-rich plasma as a promising biologic treatment for myocardial infarction (heart attack).
The findings were published online in Cardiovascular Revascularization Medicine and will be presented at The Sixth International Conference on Cell Therapy for Cardiovascular Disease at Columbia University Medical Center, New York City, on January 20, 2011.
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been identified as a novel ...
DURHAM, N.C. – Researchers from Duke University Medical Center have identified how nanoparticles from diesel exhaust damage lung airway cells, a finding that could lead to new therapies for people susceptible to airway disease.
The scientists also discovered that the severity of the injury depends on the genetic make-up of the affected individual.
"We gained insight into why some people can remain relatively healthy in polluted areas and why others don't," said lead author Wolfgang Liedtke, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Duke Department of Medicine and an ...
Women, nonwhites, and people in the southern United States who were newly infected with HIV and followed for an average of four years experienced greater HIV/AIDS-related morbidity compared to men and people of other races living in other regions of the country. The findings, published in the February 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, underscore the urgent need to improve the health of these populations in order to reduce HIV-related morbidity and mortality in the U.S. (Please see below for a link to the embargoed study online.)
The researchers did not ...
These events will be open to H/U/M special guests and House Members of The Cornell Club - New York and to members of New York's Ivy League Clubs including Columbia, Harvard, The University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Yale, and Williams College. This event includes a formal evening of cocktails, dinner, networking and learning from a panel of financial experts.
Since the event is sold out- We also will be livestreaming the event on http://www.huntingtonbuzz.tv.
The second panel in the series, "Should Women Rule the Investment World?" will be held Tuesday, January 18, ...
Online reputation management is the process of monitoring online comments/references to a company, brand or person. When you engage in Online Reputation Management or ORM you are monitoring any comments/references on an ongoing basis while evaluating all of this feedback for truth, reach, source and integrity. Then you take that information and decide what the risk or gain is for each of these references and act accordingly. You could ignore them, reply with a comment of your own, draft a response on your own website acknowledging the situation, or contact the poster and ...
Here at Hypo Venture Capital we are committed to offering our clients access to the latest and broadest range of financial services and products on the market. We know that choosing the right strategy, the right investment and the right product is no easy task in this day and age! Whether its advice, investments or financial planning we are here to answer all your questions and facilitate all your financial needs.
In 2011 and into the future most folks in search of good investments will again turn to mutual funds for investing money, and for good reason. These funds do ...
Jesse Torres today announced the release of his latest book on social media risks in the workplace. The "Human Resources Guide to Social Media Risks" (ISBN 1456533126) (http://amzn.to/hrsmguide) is a book that addresses organizational risks associated with social media. With the lines between personal and professional social media use becoming increasingly blurred, social media risks in the workplace have reached a tipping point that now requires all organizations to evaluate social media risks in the workplace. This is true regardless of an organization's adoption of social ...
