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Action on Smoking and Health
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India: Smoking Causes TB Deaths [08/15-1]
Excerpts from: Smoking causes Indian TB deaths
MSNBC [08/14/03]
Smoking is to blame for half the tuberculosis deaths among Indian men, according
to new research published Friday, highlighting a neglected link between tobacco
and the lung disease.
Most big studies into smoking and health until now had been conducted in developed
countries where tuberculosis has been uncommon for more than half a century.
`As a result, the connection with TB — still endemic across much of Asia
and Africa — has been greatly underestimated, according to the authors
of the first major study on how smoking causes death in India.
The study also predicted the number of men dying from smoking related illnesses
in India could double to more than a million a year by 2025.
Three quarters of male Indian smokers who become ill with tuberculosis would
not have done so if they had not smoked, Peto and colleagues said in a paper
published in medical journal The Lancet.
Their findings suggest that in some parts of the world the main way smoking
kills is not via cancer and heart disease, but by damaging the lung’s defenses
against chronic TB infection.
About a billion people worldwide are carrying live tuberculosis infection in
their lungs, but if they do not smoke most will never become seriously ill,
they said. Smoking increases the danger that any infection will get out of control
and cause clinical TB, which can kill and spreads easily to others.
Smokers of both Western-style cigarettes and “bidis” —thin Indian
cigarettes containing small amounts of tobacco wrapped in a greenish-brown leaf
— are similarly at risk.
Overall, smoking currently causes some 700,000 deaths a year in India, 550,000
among men aged 25-69. The number of deaths could double by 2025 if current smoking
patterns persist, the authors conclude.
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