Above 480,000 U.S. adults die every year from cigarette smoking as per the American Heart Association’s Heart and Stroke Statistical Update 2021. Although the ill effects of smoking are evident, still more than 34 million US adults smoke cigarettes.
“There is often more awareness and concern about cancer as a result of smoking than heart disease, so we wanted to better define the risks of smoking related to different types of cardiovascular disease and, most importantly, to cardiovascular death,” says lead study author Sadiya S. Kahn, M.D., M.Sc., an assistant professor of medicine in the division of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
The study team combined data from nine long-term cohort studies in the U.S. to evaluate multiple lifestyle factors as well as cardiovascular and other health outcomes.
The initial data included those from 106,165 adults (50.4% women; 16.2% Black adults; 50.1% cigarette smokers) between the ages of 20 and 79 years with no history of cardiovascular diseases in the past.
Later the participants were categorized based on smoking status, age, and sex with a follow-up time of 10 to 25 years.
Smoking and CVD
It was found that middle-aged men and women who smoked, had a 79% (1.5 times) and twice as the risk of having a fatal CVD event as their first sign respectively when compared to those who did not smoke.
In addition, the long-term rates of CVD risk for middle-aged women and men were nearly 10% higher among smokers. Thus, smoking was associated with the development of cardiovascular disease at an earlier age, by 5 years and ~4 years in middle-aged men and women respectively.
The risk for CVD increased even more significantly in young men and women among the age group 20 to 39 years of age.
“Our findings note that preventing a heart attack, stroke or heart failure is vital, yet preventing unexpected sudden death as the first manifestation of cardiovascular disease is clearly a priority. People who smoke may not realize the harm cigarettes are causing their body until it’s too late,” says Khan.
Source: Medindia
