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Teenage girls are more likely to take up smoking than any other sector of the community, increasing their risk of all the associated diseases.

And UWA research has recently found that they are also at a high risk of disease from passive smoking - a much higher risk than teenage boys.

Dr Chi Le-Ha from the School of Medicine and Pharmacology at Royal Perth Hospital is the lead author in study published in the international Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism , which reported that teenage girls faced a higher risk of heart disease than teenage boys.

The study found that girls exposed to second-hand smoke had less of the ‘good' cholesterol which reduces heart disease risk. Second-hand smoke did not appear to have the same impact on teenage boys.

High-density lipoproteins (HDL) pick up excess cholesterol in the blood and take it to the liver where it can be broken down.  Unlike low-density lipoproteins that can create a waxy build-up blocking blood vessels, HDL cholesterol can play a key role in combatting heart disease risk.

"We don't know the biological mechanism of the sex difference in the relationship between cigarette smoke exposure and reduced HDL cholesterol levels," Dr Le-Ha said.

He is a physician with research interests in the life-course epidemiology of heart disease and risk factors, and the developmental origins of cardiovascular disease.

Dr Le-Ha said the research team had surveyed more than 1,000 adolescents, using the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study, a Perth-based longitudinal cohort of children born in WA between 1989 and 1992.

"In our study we found that 17-year-old girls raised in households where passive smoking occurred were more likely to experience declines in HDL cholesterol levels," he said.

"Second-hand smoke did not have the same impact on boys of the same age, which suggests passive smoking exposure may be more harmful to girls.

"Considering cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women in the Western world, this is a serious concern.

"I think our findings reflect a difference in important aspects of the cardiovascular pathophysiology between boys and girls," he said.

"We don't have any data on whether the risk of heart disease reduces when and if a teenage girl leaves home and live in a smoke-free environment," he said. "But if has been previously shown in adults that stopping smoking decreases the cardiovascular mortality rate during a follow-up period of 12 years."

Dr Le-Ha said the results suggested public health efforts needed to focus on reducing children's second-hand smoke exposure in the home, particularly for girls.