According to the january issue of the Mayo Clinic Women’s HealthSource, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is increasingly becoming a problem for women. The most important risk factor for COPD is long term cigarette smoking.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a broad term that describes any of a group of illnesses that block airflow through the lungs. The most common are emphysema and chronic bronchitis with symptoms often develop gradually, and people don’t realise they have the disease until it’s advanced.

The COPD death rate for women in the United States has increased much faster between 1980 and 2000 than it did for men. In 2000, the number of women dying of COPD surpassed men for the first time. According to recent research, women with the disease experience more breathlessness, higher rates of depression and lower quality of life than men with the disease, even those women reported fewer years of smoking than men.

The increase in female rates of COPD likely reflects the increase in the number of female smokers since the 1940s, when advertisers began promoting smoking as a symbol of independence for women.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease can be treated, but not cured. The most important treatment is to stop smoking. For smokers with COPD, quitting smoking reduces subsequent loss of lung function by half and cuts the death rate by nearly half.

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