Smoking also increases the risk of developing age-related macular degeneration. AMD is the leading cause of blindness among adults fifty and older. Research has shown AMD is two to three times more common among smokers than other people.
FAITH LAPIDUS: A recent study examined how smoking affects a person’s risk of AMD later in life. Researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles studied nearly two thousand women.
Four percent of the women were smokers. Each woman had pictures of her retinas taken at age seventy-eight. The researchers compared these retinal images with pictures taken five years later when the women were eighty-three. They studied the pictures for signs of AMD and to see whether smoking influenced the women’s chances of developing the disease.
The women who smoked had an eleven percent higher rate of AMD than the other women. In women over eighty, those who smoked were five and a half times more likely to develop AMD than the women who did not smoke. A report on the study was published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology.
BOB DOUGHTY: People who smoke are not only hurting themselves. They also can harm non-smokers. The World Health Organization estimates that secondhand smoke kills six hundred thousand people each year.
The International Union Against Cancer says about seven hundred million children breathe smoke-filled air. Expectant mothers who smoke are more likely to have babies with health problems and low birth weight. Such babies may suffer health problems as they grow.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25