A study showed that women who smoke are more likely to develop heart disease than men. After reviewing data on 2.4 million people and 44,000 cardiovascular events, found women smokers have a 25 percent greater risk for coronary heart disease than men who smoke.
"The difference in risk for male smokers and women increased by two percent for every year they smoke. Not widely acknowledged that there has been a difference in this study," said Rachel Huxley of the University of Minnesota, as quoted by Reuters.
According to Huxley, this finding can be attributed to physical differences between men and women, or differences in smoking habits. For example, there are some data that indicates women will absorb more harmful in cigarette smoke than men.
"Women may inhale more smoke, or they may smoke more intensively," said Huxley.
Huxley said, the next step is completing a similar study to examine whether similar findings can be applied to other complications associated with smoking, such as stroke.
One fifth of the 1.1 billion smokers in the world are women and millions of women in developing countries are at risk of illness and death due to the increasing economic and political status that causes them to more smoke.