Smoking can lead to up to 40 million deaths by 2050
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by a bacterium called "Mycobacterium Tuberculosis" which affects the lungs.Smoking is a practice which over the years has become very popular among the world's population. The nicotine from the cigarettes, when consumed in high dosages leads to lung cancer in most smoker patients, but it also affects the people surrounding the smokers, which are called "second-hand" smokers.
Smoking also increases the chances of a person of contracting tuberculosis, because it affects the power of the lungs to protect themselves from external factors such as bacteria. Tuberculosis being an infectious illness, is affecting mostly smoker patients due to their low immune system and poor power of the lungs to protect.
Currently, approximately 5 million people die annually due to diseases caused by smoking.
According to a mathematical model developed by a group of researchers from the University of California, smoking could be the cause of 40 million deaths of tuberculosis by the year 2050.
Although previous mathematical models have been used to predict the mortality rate for other diseases such as HIV, this is the first one to predict the deaths caused by Tuberculosis in case of smokers.
According to the authors of the study, most of the cigarettes are smoked in areas where the number of cases with Tuberculosis is high and the tobacco industry is developed.
The conclusions of the study stated that if the number of smokers' increases as it has so far, the number of cases of Tuberculosis could rise from 256 million to 274 million.
The areas where there will be the highest increase in the number of cases, according to the researchers, will be Africa, Southeast Asia and Eastern Mediterranean.
This research is part of the initiative of the Millennium Development Goal to reduce the number of mortality due to Tuberculosis with half by 2050.
The leading author of the study was Dr. Sanjay Basu, from the University of California. The study was published on-line on the "British Medical Journal" website.
