Chicago - Women who stop smoking can enjoy major health benefits within five years, but it can take decades to correct respiratory damage and lower their risk of lung cancer, researchers have reported.
Those who kicked the habit had a 13 percent reduction in the risk of death from all causes including heart and vascular problems within the first five years.
After 20 years the risk of death from any cause was the same for those who quit as it was for those who had never smoked, the study found.
The report also found that women who started smoking later in life had a lower risk of many lung and heart diseases, which the researchers said was troubling given recent studies that show youngsters are taking up cigarettes at early ages.
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"Our findings indicate that 64 percent of deaths in current smokers and 28 percent of deaths in past smokers are attributable to smoking," Stacey Kenfield of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and colleagues wrote in their report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Quitting reduces the excess mortality rates for all major causes of death examined," they added.
For deaths due specifically to respiratory diseases there was an 18 percent reduction within five to 10 years of quitting, reaching the level found in non-smokers after 20 years.
And while there was a 21 percent reduction in the risk of lung cancer death within five years, it took 30 years for that excess risk to go away.
The findings are the latest to emerge from a study of more than 121 000 women US nurses whose health histories were recorded in 1976 and followed during the ensuing years.
While the study involved only women, other research has found benefits for men who stop smoking.
The authors said a US survey in 2003 found that 13 percent of smokers first started at about the age of 13 or 14, and that 22 percent of all US high school students then reported they were smoking.
"It is likely that deaths attributable to smoking will increase over time unless there is a substantial increase in cessation," the study concluded.
Worldwide, about five million premature deaths were attributable to smoking in 2000, the researchers said.
The World Health Organisation projects that by 2030 tobacco-attributable deaths will account for three million deaths in industrialised countries annually and seven million in developing countries.
- This article was originally published on page 9 of Cape Times on May 21, 2008
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