Cigarettes and the Skeleton

Abstract
In this issue of the Journal Hopper and Seeman examine the effect of tobacco use on bone density by comparing female twins discordant for cigarette smoking1. The bone density of the women who smoked or who smoked more heavily was significantly lower than that of their twin sisters, and the pairs with the largest differences in tobacco use had the largest differences in bone density. In this and other studies, the bone density of the women who smoked or who smoked more heavily was between 0.5 and 1.5 SD lower than that of the women who did not smoke . . .