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Giving up smoking has rapid health benefits, says study
Reported 07 May, 2008
People who give up smoking begin to improve their health
almost immediately, according to a study of more than 100,000 women carried
out between 1980 and 2004. Within five years the risk of death from all
causes fell by 13%, it found. By 20 years, people had no extra risk of death
because of their past smoking history.
The study, by researchers at Harvard medical school in Boston, also
highlights the benefits of not starting smoking until later; women who began
at 17 were 22% more likely to die within the study period than those who
started at 26 or older. The news will encourage the third of smokers in the
UK who would like to give up the habit. A survey by the Office for National
Statistics released in January found 22% of Britons are smokers, down from
27% at the end of the 1990s and the lowest level since records began.
According to the British Medical Association, smoking-related illnesses kill
more than 90,000 people each year, and cost the NHS £1.5bn a year.
The new study used data from the so-called Nurses Health Study in the United
States, which collected health questionnaires from more than 120,000 women
aged between 30 and 55 in 11 states from 1976 onwards. Researchers could
link answers to lifestyle questions - for example, about how much people
smoked - to information about the volunteers' general health and how they
ended up dying. The questionnaires have been repeated every two years,
giving researchers an evolving picture of the participants' habits and
lives. From this they were able to compare women who had smoked but given up
with women who had never smoked or never given up.
The study confirmed that smoking is a potent cause of disease; 64% of deaths
among current smokers could be attributable to cigarettes, and 28% of deaths
among former smokers. Those who smoked 35 or more cigarettes a day were 115
times more likely to develop chronic bronchitis and emphysema. They also
raised their risk of lung cancer by 40 times.
More heartening for smokers who want to kick the habit is data suggesting
that the health benefits of stopping appear quickly. For coronary heart
disease, 61% of the full potential benefit from quitting happens in the
first five years; for strokes 42%; for lung cancer 21%.
Rates of mortality from respiratory disease, lung cancer and smoking-related
cancer were all lower in women who had started smoking later. "So
implementing and maintaining school tobacco prevention programmes, in
addition to enforcing youth access laws, are key preventive strategies.
Effectively communicating risks to smokers and helping them quit
successfully should be an integral part of public health programmes," the
authors of the study, Dr Stacey Kenfield and colleagues, wrote in the
Journal of the American Medical Association.
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