Smoking May Have More Ways To Kill You Than Previously Believed, Says Study

Tobacco is a killer, with smokers having death rates three times higher than those of lifelong nonsmokers, according to the American Cancer Society. However, a new study found there may be more diseases caused by smoking than previously determined.

Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study was founded on data associated with close to 1 million men and women that were collected during five U.S. cohort studies: the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention Study-II, Health Professionals Follow-up Study, National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study, Nurses’ Health Study and Women’s Health Initiative.

The individuals in these studies were 55 or older and they were followed for about 10 years. More than 180,000 deaths were reported among the participants. The number of smoking-related deaths matched previous estimates, but researchers determined that 17 percent of deaths in smokers were caused by diseases that have not yet been officially linked to smoking by the U.S. surgeon general.

“In our study, many excess deaths among smokers were from disease categories that are not currently established as caused by smoking, and we believe there is strong evidence that many of these deaths may have been caused by smoking,” Eric J. Jacobs, a co-author of the study, said in a statement.

“If the same is true nationwide, then cigarette smoking may be killing about 60,000 more Americans each year than previously estimated, a number greater than the total number who die each year of influenza or liver disease,” Jacobs said.

Smoking causes colorectal cancer, diabetes mellitus, immune-system weakness, liver cancer and rheumatoid arthritis, the U.S. surgeon general has noted. It also causes coronary heart disease and stroke, while increasing the risk of lung cancer by 25 times in men and 25.7 times in women, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has pointed out. Chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema are caused by smoking, too, the CDC has said. Other diseases related to smoking include influenza, pneumonia and tuberculosis, as well as cancers of the bladder, cervix, esophagus, larynx and lip, according to the New York Times.

The new study could add hypertensive heart disease, infections, intestinal ishemia, renal failure and more respiratory diseases to the list of ailments associated with smoking to the point where it increases the risk of death. The study found smoking doubled the risk of dying from those five diseases, while also observing it increased such risk from breast cancer and prostate cancer, albeit by smaller percentages.