Tobacco involved in nearly 5 million deaths in 2000

Nearly 5 million premature deaths that occurred during 2000 can be attributed to smoking, and more than half of these deaths involved people aged 30-69 years, indicate the results of an Australian-US study published in the specialized "Tobacco Control" journal.
And developing countries, with 2.41 million premature smoking-related deaths, do not prove less concerned than the industrialized countries, where a similar number of deaths could be attributed to smoking during the study period.

Majid Azzati, Harvard University in Boston and Alan Lopez of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, conducted a statistical analysis of demographic and medical data to analyze the mortality of elderly people over 30 years in 14 regions globe.

Their work showed that among the diseases associated with smoking, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death. In 2000, they killed more than a million people in industrialized countries were responsible for 670,000 deaths in developing countries.

Followed by lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD in industrialized countries, while the respective roles of these two conditions is reversed in developing countries.

On average, the overall distribution of these tobacco-related deaths is around four men to one woman (3.83 million men and one million women), and it is almost equally between 30-69 years and more 70 years (2.69 million against 2.14 million deaths).

However, the distribution of smoking-related mortality by sex, age group or condition in question is significant variability from one region to another, especially in developing countries, say the authors.