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6 February 2007 Male Home Smoking Strikingly Increases Spouse¡¦s Risk of Coronary Heart Disease
Between 2004 and 2006, a research project has been conducted by the S.H. Ho Cardiovascular and Stroke Centre and Division of Cardiology of the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The study consisted of a total of 507 subjects, including 239 female patients with CHD and 268 patients without CHD as controls, all of them never smoke. These patients were enrolled from major hospitals of New Territories East Cluster, and mainly from Prince of Wales Hospital. A detailed questionnaire was conducted face to face to each of them, and data about their exposure to passive household smoking from spouses were analyzed. The results showed that 34% of patients with CHD and 25% of patients without CHD were exposed to passive household smoking. Also, passive household smoking exposure will increase the risk of CHD by 1.6 fold. Moreover, the risk will be increased to nearly 3.6 fold if their spouses smoked for 10 years or more. Similarly, the risk will be strikingly increased to 3.9 fold if their male spouses smoked for 1 pack of cigarette per day or more.
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