COPD now affects more women than men

Since smoking became a popular trend during WWI and WWII more men smoked, more men developed COPD, and more men died of the disease than women.  Yet that trend seems to have changed, as a new report by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) confirms.

U.S.News.com writes that the study followed COPD patients from 1998 through 2009, and found that COPD prevalence has relatively stayed the same, and the only trend that changed was that more women than men died of the disease.  In fact, in 2007, as WebMD notes, "COPD killed nearly 60,000 men and nearly 65,000 women."

U.S.News notes the report concluded that "Just over 6 percent of women now have COPD, the study found, compared to just over 4 percent of men."

So why this shifting trend.  U.S. News quotes Dr. Lara J. Akinbami, a medical officer in the Office of Analysis and Epidemiology at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics with the explaination. 

She said, " "The relative increase of COPD among women is largely due to more women taking up smoking in the 1970s and 1980s, Akinbami believes. These women are only now entering a time when the symptoms of COPD start to appear."

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