VOA慢速英语2009-Health Report - Smoking and the Risk to Wome

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

C.O.P.D., chronic¹ obstructive pulmonary disease, blocks airflow through the lungs. It makes breathing difficult. The leading cause is cigarette smoking. Experts at the National Institutes of Health in the United States say the damage to the lungs cannot be repaired and there is no cure.

Dawn DeMeo is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

DAWN DeMEO: "By two thousand and twenty, C.O.P.D. will likely be the third leading cause of death across the world."

C.O.P.D. is a new name for emphysema and chronic bronchitis. These are the two most common forms of the disease. Many people with C.O.P.D. have both of them. And Doctor DeMeo says more women than men now die from the disease.

She is the lead author of a study by a team from Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital and the University of Bergen in Norway. The new study adds to findings that women may be more at risk than men for the damaging effects of smoking.

The team examined results from a Norwegian study of nine hundred fifty-four people with C.O.P.D. Inga-Cecilie Soerheim co-authored the team's findings. Doctor Soerheim says they show that women suffered the same severity of C.O.P.D. as men. But, by comparison, the female smokers² were younger and had smoked a lot less.

The team also looked at two groups among the people in the study. These were people under the age of sixty and those who had smoked for less than twenty years. In both cases, women had more severe C.O.P.D. and a greater loss of lung function than men.

Doctor DeMeo says some of the people in the study did not smoke much but still developed severe lung disease.

DAWN DeMEO: "Many people underestimate the health risks of their own cigarette consumption, thinking that a few cigarettes here and there, a few cigarettes every day, are harmless. But clearly there is no such thing as a safe level of cigarette smoke exposure. And our findings suggest that this is particularly true for women."

The study was presented last month to the American Thoracic Society.

Doctor Soerheim says there are several possible explanations why women may be more at risk from the effects of cigarette smoke than men. Women have smaller airways³, she says, so each cigarette may do more harm. Also, there are differences between males and females in the way the body processes cigarette smoke. And she says genes⁴ and hormones⁵ could also play an important part.

And that's the VOA Special English Health Report, written by June Simms. You can comment on our reports, and read what other people are saying, at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.

1 chronic   

adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的

参考例句：

• Famine differs from chronic malnutrition.饥荒不同于慢性营养不良。
• Chronic poisoning may lead to death from inanition.慢性中毒也可能由虚弱导致死亡。

2 smokers   

吸烟者( smoker的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Many smokers who are chemically addicted to nicotine cannot cut down easily. 许多有尼古丁瘾的抽烟人不容易把烟戒掉。
• Chain smokers don't care about the dangers of smoking. 烟鬼似乎不在乎吸烟带来的种种危害。

3 AIRWAYS   

航空公司

参考例句：

• The giant jets that increasingly dominate the world's airways. 越来越称雄于世界航线的巨型喷气机。
• At one point the company bought from Nippon Airways a 727 jet. 有一次公司从日本航空公司买了一架727型喷气机。

4 genes   

n.基因( gene的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You have good genes from your parents, so you should live a long time. 你从父母那儿获得优良的基因，所以能够活得很长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Differences will help to reveal the functions of the genes. 它们间的差异将会帮助我们揭开基因多种功能。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 生物技术的世纪

5 hormones   

n. 荷尔蒙，激素 名词hormone的复数形式

参考例句：

• This hormone interacts closely with other hormones in the body. 这种荷尔蒙与体內其他荷尔蒙紧密地相互作用。
• The adrenals produce a large per cent of a man's sex hormones. 肾上腺分泌人体的大部分性激素。