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A new report on smoking and health released by U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, M.D., M.P.H., shows for the first time that smoking causes diseases in nearly every organ of the body. Published 40 years after the surgeon general's first report on smoking--which concluded that smoking was a definite cause of three serious diseases--this newest report finds that cigarette smoking is conclusively linked to many other diseases and conditions.
"We've known for decades that smoking is bad for your health, but this report shows that it's even worse than we knew," Carmona said in releasing the report in May 2004. "The toxins from cigarette smoke go everywhere the blood flows."
According to the report, smoking kills an estimated 440,000 Americans each year. On average, men who smoke cut their lives short by 13.2 years, and female smokers lose 14.5 years. The economic toll exceeds $157 billion each year in the United States--$75 billion in direct medical costs and $82 billion in lost productivity.
In 1964, the surgeon general's report announced medical research showing that smoking was a definite cause of cancers of the lung and voice box (larynx) in men and chronic bronchitis in both men and women. Later reports concluded that smoking causes other diseases, such as cancers of the bladder, esophagus, mouth, and throat; cardiovascular diseases; and reproductive effects.
The new report, titled The Health Consequences of Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General, expands the list of illnesses and conditions linked to smoking. The new illnesses and diseases are cataracts, pneumonia, acute myeloid leukemia, abdominal aortic aneurysm, stomach cancer, pancreatic cancer, cervical cancer, kidney cancer, and periodontitis.
Statistics indicate that more than 12 million Americans have died from smoking since the 1964 report of the surgeon general. Another 25 million Americans alive today will most likely die of a smoking-related illness.
The report concludes that smoking reduces the overall health of smokers, contributing to such conditions as hip fractures, complications from diabetes, increased wound infections following surgery, and a wide range of reproductive complications. According to the report, quitting smoking has both immediate and long-term benefits. "Within minutes and hours after smokers inhale that last cigarette, their bodies begin a series of changes that continue for years," Carmona says. Quitting smoking at age 65 or older, he says, reduces by nearly 50 percent a person's risk of dying of a smoking-related disease.
A new animated Web site showing the hazards of smoking and the benefits of quitting can be found on the surgeon general's Web site. Copies of the report are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, office on smoking and health, (800) CDC-1311, and on the surgeon general's Web site.
Older people with hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis) are more likely to have symptoms of depression, according to a study done by Dutch researchers.
Henning Tiemeier, M.D., Ph.D., of Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands, and colleagues investigated the relationship between atherosclerosis at different locations in the body and depression in 4,019 men and women age 60 and older.
The researchers found that severe atherosclerosis was associated with a higher prevalence of depressive disorders. They also found that patients with severe calcium deposits in the heart (coronary calcifications) were almost four times as likely to have depressive symptoms, and patients with calcifications in the main artery bringing blood into the heart (aorta) were twice as likely to have depressive symptoms.
According to the study, published in the April 2004 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, existing research suggests a relationship between vascular factors, such as hardening of the arteries or calcium deposits in the blood vessels, and late-life depression. A theory has been put forward that atherosclerosis may have an effect on the brain, leading to depression later in life.
"In this population-based study, we found that subjects with atherosclerosis were more likely to be depressed," the authors write. "A combined measure of extracoronary [not in the heart itself] atherosclerosis was related to depressive disorders, although at some of the different locations the association was only moderate and nonsignificant. A strong relationship was observed only between severe coronary and aortic calcifications and depressive disorders."
Depression is not a normal part of growing old, but rather a treatable condition that affects more than 6 million of the more than 40 million Americans over age 65, according to the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry.