Hormone Tied to Smoker’s Health Risk

It has been known for some time that women ages 25-44 who smoke and use oral contraceptives have a much higher risk--10 times as high--of developing cardiovascular disease and strokes than women who use the Pill but do not smoke. Recently, USC researchers discovered a possible explanation for this phenomenon.

Long-term smoking (defined as at least one pack a day for longer than five years) and the use of oral contraceptives cuts production of a hormone called prostacyclin, which improves blood flow and inhibits clumping of platelets in the blood that can cause clots and atherosclerotic plaque deposits in blood vessels, according to Dr. Jerry L. Nadler, an assistant professor of medicine at USC.

Nadler and his colleagues compared prostacyclin levels in smokers and nonsmokers in groups who used the Pill and did not use it, and measured levels after the smokers had abstained for 12 hours and again after they had inhaled smoke for four hours. Decreased prostacyclin levels were found in some of the smokers, even after they had abstained from smoking for the 12 hours, and the levels further decreased when they resumed smoking.

As part of an ongoing investigation of the mechanisms of vascular disease in smokers, Nadler and his group are also evaluating the effects of smoking and the Pill on another critical hormone, thromboxane, which constricts blood vessels and stimulates the clumping of platelets.

Nadler emphasized that the findings are preliminary, and only a part of what needs to be learned about links between smoking, oral contraceptive use and cardiovascular disease and stroke. The USC study used a small group of subjects, and it is not known whether the same results would show up in larger populations. Other questions are whether brands of contraceptives or cigarettes (including nicotine-free ones) would affect the results and whether the length of time a woman has used the Pill is a factor.

For the second consecutive year, American women have named fear of sexually transmitted diseases as their No. 1 concern in the Glamour magazine Women’s Views Survey. The fifth annual poll of women 18 to 65, conducted by Mark Clements Research Inc., uses a national probability sampling with findings projectable to the U.S. female population.

Fear of sexual diseases was cited as a concern by 64% of the respondents, perhaps partly because one in four women polled believed that AIDS could be caught by casual contact, a view that is considered wrong by almost all medical experts on acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Half of the single women said that fear of AIDS had caused them to change their sex habits.

Among other concerns expressed in the wide-ranging poll:

--Wage discrimination may be steadily climbing--or awareness of it is. Eighty-five percent of the poll respondents reported wage discrimination in 1986 compared to 76% in a previous poll in 1982.

--In 1982, more than half the respondents believed the U.S. was moving toward global war. Now a third express that fear.

--Almost half of all women rate financial success as “very important,” up considerably from previous years.

--Despite the popular belief that women are in a panic about the so-called “marriage crunch,” the poll indicates that single women don’t worry much about whether they’ll find a husband. Only 14% of single women said they worried about whether they would ever marry, and just half of them described marriage as being “very important” to them.

--84% of women believe pornography leads to violence against women and should be restricted.

--82% favor more sex education in public schools.