Stop Smoking for Rapid Health Benefits: Study

People who smoke can radically improve their health in few years if they give up the habit, said researchers of Tuesday as they reported the results of a study that involved more than 100,000 women. But damage that smoke causes to respiratory tissues and the risks of lung cancer can take long to correct.

The study, carried out between 1980 and 2004, found that it might take two decades for people to shed all the risk of death because of their past smoking history.

“The harms of smoking are reversible and can decline to the level of nonsmokers. For some conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, it can take more than 20 years, but there is a rapid reduction for others. It’s never too early to stop and it’s never too late to stop,” study lead author Stacey Kenfield, ScD, of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said.

A 13 percent reduction in the risk of death from all causes was noted in the women participating in the study. Risks of heart disease-related deaths were reduced by 47 percent and risk of death from stroke dropped by 27 percent.

Smokers puffing 35 or more cigarettes a day were 115 times more likely to develop chronic bronchitis and emphysema and raised their risk of lung cancer by 40 times.

“Our findings indicate that 64 percent of deaths in current smokers and 28 percent of deaths in past smokers are attributable to smoking,” Kenfield and colleagues said. “Quitting reduces the excess mortality rates for all major causes of death examined.”

Women who had started smoking later had lower rates of mortality from respiratory disease, lung cancer and smoking-related cancer.

"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," wrote the authors in the Journal of the American Medical Association.