Smoking May Affect Hormonal Balance

Smoking gives post-menopausal women higher levels of two male hormones, suggesting that the hormones might account for the higher incidence of heart attacks among women smokers, researchers at UC San Diego say.

The findings also point to hormones as the potential explanation for why men are three times more likely than women to have cardiovascular disease.

Among 233 post-menopausal women, levels of two male hormones produced by the adrenal gland were 50% higher than in non-smokers, the researchers reported last week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Estrogen levels did not appear to vary from those of non-smokers.

This removes the spotlight from the female hormone estrogen as a promoter of disease--it is known to play a role in breast and reproductive system cancers--and places it on male hormones, said Kay-Tee Khaw, an epidemiologist who was one of four co-authors of the report.