The good news: Tuberculosis deaths could be reduced by 27 million worldwide over the next 40 years if countries push a one-percent drop in smoking rates.
The bad news, according to this post on HealthDay.com, is if rates stay where they are now, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, predict 18 million more TB cases and 40 million more deaths over the next 40 years.
Smoking raises the risk of contracting TB, which is a lung disease cause by a bacterial infection, and of dying from the disease, said Dr. Sanjay Basu, lead author, according to the overview.
“Tobacco control is tuberculosis control,” senior author Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF, said in a university news release.
“This paper shows that, because smoking and passive smoking facilitate the spread of TB and the transition from infection to active TB, reducing tobacco use is an important key to achieving the millennium development goals for TB,” Basu said.
The research was published in the British Medical Journal, which provides free access to the article.
Why is this post on this blog? Because, according to the CDC’s ACE Study, child trauma can lead to increased smoking in adults, who use it as a coping mechanism.