Women smokers have more heart risk than men

Women who smoke cigarettes are more likely to develop heart disease than men, says new research released on Wednesday.

After reviewing data on 2.4 million people and 44,000 cardiac events, the article's authors found female smokers have a 25 percent greater risk for coronary heart disease than males who smoke cigarettes.

The researchers, published in The Lancet medical journal, also found the difference in risk for male and female smokers increased by two percent for every year they smoke.

"It hasn't been widely recognized that there had been this sex difference," said Rachel Huxley of the University of Minnesota, the article's lead author, in an interview.

The findings could be attributed to physical differences between men and women, or differences in smoking habits, according to the study.

"For example, there are some data that indicate women will absorb more of the harmful agents in a cigarette compared to men," said Huxley. "Women may inhale more smoke or they may smoke more intensively."

Huxley said her next step is to complete a similar study to examine if the same finding can be applied to other complications related to smoking, such as strokes.

A fifth of the world's 1.1 billion smokers are women and an analysis released in March said millions of women in developing countries risked disease and death as their rising economic and political status leads them to smoke more.

Abused women have more mental health risk

Rape, sexual assault, intimate partner violence and stalking increase the lifetime risk of mental health disorders among women, Australian researchers say.

Study leader Dr. Susan Rees of the University of New South Wales' School of Psychiatry and colleagues analyzed survey data of 4,451 women ages 16-85.

About 15 percent of Australian women report sexual assault, while 9 percent report being raped, 8 percent report physical intimate partner violence and 10 percent report stalking.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows the four most common types of gender-based violence are strongly associated with a wide range of problems for women, including more severe current mental disorder, higher rates of three or more lifetime mental disorders, physical disability, mental disability, impaired quality of life and overall disability.

"It was the strength of these associations that was most shocking. There is an overwhelming link between gender violence and key indicators of women's mental health, well being and risk of suicide attempts," Rees says in a statement. "For women exposed to two types of gender-based violence the lifetime rate of mental disorder was 69 percent and for three or more types of gender-based violence, it was 89.4 percent. This compares with a rate of 28 percent for women who have not experienced violence. The link with gender-based violence was particularly strong for post-traumatic stress disorder."