The Nation - News from Nov. 19, 1987

Smoking causes about half of all heart attacks among young and middle-aged women, and even three or four cigarettes a day sharply increase the risk, a study has concluded. Until a few years ago, many experts believed that cigarettes did not contribute to heart disease in women. But recent research, including the report based on the Nurses Health Study, concludes that no level of smoking can be considered safe, and that women who smoke fewer than five cigarettes a day have two to three times the heart disease risk of nonsmokers. “Any doubt about the effect of smoking on acquired heart disease in women should be erased” by the latest study, wrote Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding of UCLA in an accompanying editorial to the report in the New England Journal of Medicine.