Lancet
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Comparative Study
Smoking and mortality from tuberculosis and other diseases in India: retrospective study of 43000 adult male deaths and 35000 controls.
In India most adult deaths involve vascular disease, pulmonary tuberculosis, or other respiratory disease, and men have smoked cigarettes or bidis (which resemble small cigarettes) for several decades. The study objective was to assess age-specific mortality from smoking among men (since few women smoke) in urban and in rural India. ⋯ Smoking, which increases the incidence of clinical tuberculosis, is a cause of half the male tuberculosis deaths in India, and of a quarter of all male deaths in middle age (plus smaller fractions of the deaths at other ages). At current death rates, about a quarter of cigarette or bidi smokers would be killed by tobacco at ages 25-69 years, those killed at these ages losing about 20 years of life expectancy. Overall, smoking currently causes about 700000 deaths per year in India, chiefly from respiratory or vascular disease: about 550000 men aged 25-69 years, about 110000 older men, and much smaller numbers of women (since few women smoke).
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The larval stage of the pork tapeworm (Taenia solium) infects the human nervous system, causing neurocysticercosis. This disease is one of the main causes of epileptic seizures in many less developed countries and is also increasingly seen in more developed countries because of immigration from endemic areas. ⋯ Available therapeutic measures include steroids, treatments for symptoms, surgery, and, more controversially, antiparasitic drugs to kill brain parasites. Efforts to control and eliminate this disease are underway through antiparasitic treatment of endemic populations, development of pig vaccines, and other measures.