Life expectancy in Danish women and men related to smoking habits: smoking may affect women more.

Studies reporting increased mortality in smokers are abundant but only a few have directly estimated survival prospects of smokers in terms of lost years of life or probability of living until retirement. None of these have included large numbers of heavily smoking women. A study of mortality in Danish women is particularly informative because the female smoking epidemic started early in Denmark and both prevalence of smoking and mortality from smoking related diseases remain among the highest in Western Europe. We report survival prospects of women and men randomly sampled from the general population followed up for up to 30 years.