October 17, 2008 - Women who smoke are more likely than their ex-smoking and non-smoking peers to undergo surgery for an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) or to experience a ruptured aneurysm.

An AAA occurs when the wall of the aorta, the body's largest artery that carries blood from the heart, is stretched or weakened as it passes through the abdomen. Blood pumping through the artery can cause the weakened wall to balloon out and possibly rupture. A ruptured AAA is an extremely dangerous event causing a massive amount of internal bleeding that is fatal without immediate surgery to repair the aorta.

To assess the potential risk factors for abdominal aortic aneurysm events (repairs and ruptures) in women, researchers from America studied 1,61,808 postmenopausal women aged between 50 and 80 years. During the 8 years of follow-up, the researchers took lifestyle factors such as dietary habits and smoking status of the participants into consideration. Overall, 184 women experienced an AAA rupture or repair during the period of study.

It was found that compared with former smokers and those who never smoked, current smokers had an increased the risk of an AAA event by 5- and 9-fold, respectively. Also, for every 10-year increase in age, the risk of an event rose by 77 percent. On the other hand, diabetes was associated with a 71 percent decreased risk of an AAA event.

Further, compared with women who never used hormone therapy, current and past use cut the odds of an event by 52 and 24 percent, respectively. However, since further trials are needed to confirm the positive association of hormone therapy with AAA event, researchers do not yet recommend using hormone therapy for AAA prevention.

The largest study of its kind shows that smoking increases the odds of developing AAA in women and is yet another reason for people to give up this habit.