WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Twenty percent of Americans smoke, which puts them at a higher risk of death caused by cancer and circulatory disease, says a U.S. study.
People who are both very obese and who smoke increase their risk of death by 3.5 to 5 times that of people of normal weight who never smoke, according to the study published in the November issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The study surveyed more than 80,000 current and former radiologic technologists between the ages of 22 and 92 who completed a self-administered questionnaire in the period from 1983 to 1989 that were tracked until December 2002.
In both women and men of all ages, the risk of death from circulatory disease increased with each additional increment in the BMI. When participants were obese and also current smokers, their risk of death from circulatory disease jumped even higher to an increase of 6- to 11-fold for those under age 65, compared to the participants of normal weight who never smoked, according to study leader D. Michal Freedman of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute.
