Sattar A Khan, Inayat H Thaver.
Comparison of Tobacco use between urban and rural females.
J Coll Physicians Surg Pak Jan ;9(1):11-3.

The pattern of diseases has changed and presently the risk factors of communicable diseases as well as non-communicable diseases have been rising day by day due to change in life style and `epidemiological transition`. Geographical and socio economic factors have been noted to influence the occurrence of diseases such as cancers, hypertension and coronary heart disease (CHD) etc. In females relationship between cigarette smoking and CHID is uncertain; however in different cancers some relationship has been proved. Keeping this problem in view, a study was done and comparison made between 158 urban and 158 rural randomly selected adult females regarding their age, education, occupation and tobacco using habits. Results revealed that the study population was relatively young with low literacy rate. Majority of them were house wives in both areas. In urban area 13.7% were using tobacco of which, 0.2% smoke cigarettes, 5.8% chew paan with tobacco while in rural area 23.5% were using tobacco in different forms. Of these 3.5% were smoking cigarettes, 1.6% using beeri, 12.2% using Paan with tobacco and 0.6% were using Huqa. However, there was no significant (P<0.07) difference between urban and rural females with regards to the habits. 20.9% of urban females had high systolic blood pressure that is >140 mmHg and 25.3% had high diastolic blood pressure that is >_90 mmHg while 16.5% of rural females had high systolic blood pressure and 19% had high diastolic blood pressure thus showing significant difference (P<0.05). There was also a significant difference (P<0.03) present regarding high body mass index in both areas. There is an urgent need for controlling the tobacco use among females so as to prevent the non-communicable diseases.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com