VOA慢速英语:Study Links Smoking to Millions of TB Deaths

The World Health Organization recently reported that the number of cases of tuberculosis has been falling since two thousand six. Also, fewer people are dying from TB. But a study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, says smoking could threaten this progress.
世界卫生组织最新的报告称，肺结核病例数从2006年以来一直在下降。此外，越来越少的人死于结核病。但是旧金山加利福尼亚大学的研究人员发表的一项研究表明，吸烟可能威胁到这一进展。

Nearly twenty percent of all people use tobacco, and millions of non-smokers get sick from breathing the smoke. The new study predicts that smoking will produce an additional thirty-four million TB deaths by twenty-fifty.
全世界的人口有近20%吸烟，以及数百万非吸烟者因这些烟雾而生病。这项新的研究预测，到2050年，吸烟将导致额外的3400万例结核病死亡病例。

Efforts to control the spread of tuberculosis have mainly focused on finding and treating infections. Much less effort has been made to understand the causes. Dr. Anthony Fauci is the director of the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
控制结核病传播的措施主要集中于发现和治疗感染，而较少去了解致病的原因。Anthony Fauci博士是美国国家过敏和传染病研究所主任。

ANTHONY FAUCI: "Despite our control efforts, that you still have more than a million people each year, you know, dying from TB and millions and millions getting infected, we realize it's still a very important problem. So we have to do the practical thing and we have to do the fundamental research things at the same time."
ANTHONY FAUCI：“尽管我们有控制措施，但每年仍有超过100万人死于结核病，你知道的，还有千百万人被感染。我们意识到它仍然是一个非常重要的问题。所以我们必须在做基础研究的同时做些实际的事情。”

Smoking does not cause tuberculosis; bacteria cause the infection. But the study says smoking affects the nervous system in a way that makes an inactive case of TB more likely to develop into an active one.
吸烟不会导致结核病；是细菌引起的感染。但这项研究指出，吸烟会影响神经系统，使非活性肺结核更可能发展成活性肺结核。

Stanton Glantz is director of the University of California's Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education and an author of the new study. He says it shows that tuberculosis cannot be controlled unless tobacco use is controlled.
Stanton Glantz是加州大学烟草控制研究和教育中心主任，也是这项新研究的作者之一。他说，这表明除非控制烟草的使用，否则结核病不能得到控制。

STANTON GLANTZ: "It increases the number of people who will get tuberculosis by about seven percent. It increases the number of people projected to die from tuberculosis between now and twenty-fifty by about twenty-six percent."
STANTON GLANTZ：“吸烟使感染肺结核人数增加了大约7%，预计从现在到2050年之间的结核病死亡人数将增加26%。”

The study is described as the first to identify a direct link between tobacco use and rates of TB infection and death. Professor Glantz says the results should guide those creating health policies and TB control efforts.
这项研究被认为，首先要确定烟草使用和结核病的感染和死亡率之间的直接联系。Glantz教授称，该研究结果将引导他们建立卫生政策和结核病控制措施。

STANTON GLANTZ: "If you want to control the infectious disease of tuberculosis, you have to control the tobacco industry and the tobacco industry's efforts to increase tobacco use, particularly in developing countries where tuberculosis is a big problem."
STANTON GLANTZ：“如果你想控制传染性疾病结核病，你就必须控制烟草行业及该行业增加烟草使用的措施，特别是在发展中国家，其中结核病是一个大问题。”

The study predicts that the situation will only get worse if tobacco companies continue to sell more of their products in those countries. It says strong efforts to control tobacco would not only reduce deaths from smoking-related diseases like emphysema, heart disease and lung cancer. They could also prevent millions of deaths from tuberculosis.
该研究预测，如果烟草公司在这些国家继续销售更多他们的产品，这种情况只会变得更糟。该研究还称，控制烟草的强硬措施不仅会降低如肺气肿、心脏病和肺癌等吸烟相关疾病的死亡，这还可以防止百万的人死于肺结核。

The study appeared in BMJ, the British Medical Journal.
这项研究发表在英国医学杂志“英国医学杂志”之上。