Smoking accounts for up to 60 per cent of gender gap in deaths across Europe
Tuesday 18 January, 2011
Smoking is the main reason why, on average, men die sooner than women across Europe, according to research from the Medical Research Council (MRC). Tobacco-related illness accounts for up to 60% of the gender health gap in most countries and kills twice as many men as alcohol.
The reasons for the gender gap in mortality has sometimes been put down to simple biology, or the fact that women seek out healthcare more readily than men, however, the size and variability of the trends found in this study suggests a rather more complex picture.
Scientists from the MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow used World Health Organisation figures on death rates among men and women from all causes as well as those attributed to smoking and drinking in 30 European countries for the years closest to 2005.
Gerry McCartney one of the lead authors on the MRC study, said:
“This study shows it's not simply a biological difference between men and women that drives mortality differences. The fact that the gender gap varies between countries shows that social causes are likely to play an important role.
“Smoking and alcohol-related deaths account for a large proportion of the difference in mortality between men and women”.
“It is promising that increasing numbers of people are deciding to kick the smoking habit, but there is a worrying trend of smoking and drinking now emerging among young women, which we need to monitor carefully.”
Smoking related deaths included respiratory tract cancers, coronary artery disease and stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Those related to alcohol included cancers of the throat and gullet and chronic liver disease as well as alcoholic psychosis and violence.
The analysis showed that deaths from all causes were higher for men than for women, but the excess in male deaths varied considerably across the countries studied, ranging from 188 per 100,000 of the population a year in Iceland to 942 per 100,000 in Ukraine.
In the UK, women live an average of four years longer than men, although in recent years the gap has been closing. The study found that smoking-related diseases, such as lung cancer and heart disease, caused 60% of the excess male deaths.
Deaths related to alcohol were particularly high among men in Eastern European countries, but they were also much higher for women. Overall, the proportion of deaths attributable to alcohol ranged from 20% to 30%.
The findings are published online in Tobacco Control.
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