Peripheral Arterial Disease in Women: the Effects of Smoking and Environmental Tobacco Smoke

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is an arteriosclerotic disease of the extremities that affects 8 to 12 million individuals in the United States. Reports on women are few. The hypothesis was tested that PAD prevalence was significantly higher among those exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) than in unexposed. Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 1999-2002 and 2003-2004 were used. PAD was defined as ankle brachial index (ABI) ≤ 0.90 in either leg. Serum cotinine levels were measured. All analyses took the complex survey design and weights into account. Among 4,075 women aged 40 years and older with complete data, multiple logistic regression analysis showed that light and heavy smoking cotinine categories but not ETS were associated with adjusted odds ratios > 1.0 for PAD (Figure 1). No association appeared for ETS in age or race subgroups. In a national survey of women, ETS exposure was not associated with prevalence of PAD overall or in subgroups of age and race.