Saturday, February 16, 2013

Smoking Is The Single Most Dangerous Adverse Health Behavior


No other cause of illness or death is more important than smoking. This is the clear message of two new studies of large numbers of Americans conducted by Jha etal and by Thun etal and published by the New England Journal of Medicine on January 24, 2013.
About 19% of Americans smoke regularly today, down from about 40% a few decades ago. Good progress. But for those who do smoke, diseases leading to death are common. Smokers mortality is about 3 times that of nonsmokers and essentially equal between men and women. Certain diseases have been clearly linked to smoking and these caused about 60% of the smokers’ deaths – ischemic heart disease (heart attacks and related), stroke, chronic lung disease and lung cancer being the most common.
The Thun study compared data from three time periods reaching back 50 years. Overall mortality declined by 50% over those 50 years in large part as a result of progress against heart disease. But this was a benefit largely enjoyed only by the nonsmokers since smoking exacerbates coronary artery disease.
Thun made some key observations. First, smoking deaths continue to increase among women because women who smoke smoke as much as do men. Second, death from all causes is at least 3X higher for smokers than for nonsmokers with at least two thirds of all deaths in smokers directly related to smoking. Third, the rate of death from chronic lung disease (COPD) is rising among both men and women.  They hypothesize that this rise in incidence is related to the changes in cigarettes over the years that encourage deeper inhalation with more toxins reaching the periphery of the air sacs. Using the same reasoning, they suggest that deeper inhalation than in the past may be causing the increased incidence of peripheral lung cancers especially adenocarcinomas rather the more centrally located mostly squamous cell cancers that were more common in the past. Fourth quitting smoking lowers death rates very substantially and quitting before the age of 40 can eliminate the relative risk of early death.
 
In the Jha study, the increased risk for ischemic heart disease among smokers compared to nonsmokers was about 3.5 i.e., smokers had 3.5 times as many deaths from heart disease as did the nonsmokers. Since heart disease is more frequent than lung cancer or chronic lung disease, this represented a large and common cause of death for smokers. Considering just women for example, among the 23,839 women who smoked in the study, 251 died of heart disease compared to 382 of the 67,574 women who never smoked. Lung cancer caused fewer total deaths but the relative risk for smokers was very high – 18 – based upon 289 women who smoked and died of lung cancer compared to 83 lung cancer deaths for the larger number of women who never smoked.
These two studies are a stark reminder that smoking is not simply a health hazard. It directly leads to very substantially increased risks of death from heart disease, stroke, chronic lung disease and lung cancer, among others. In the Jha study, 62% of the smokers’ deaths were attributable to smoking.
Attempts to curtail the initiation of smoking and to assist with smoking cessation are important – perhaps the single most important - health promotion and disease prevention goals for America.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Smokers Die Ten Years Sooner Than Nonsmokers


We all know that smoking is bad for our health. But how bad is bad? The answer is very bad. It takes a decade off of life.
Death rates are about 3 times higher for smokers than nonsmokers. The chance that a young person will live to age 80 is about 70% for nonsmokers but about 35% for smokers. Stated differently, a smoker loses about 11(women) to 12 (men) years of life compared to nonsmokers.
 
Now that women have been smoking for long periods of time, their risks match those of men who smoke. “Women who smoke like men die like men who smoke.” Women’s relative risk of developing and dying from lung cancer (compared to nonsmoking women) is about 25, same as for men. For chronic lung disease, the relative risks are 23 and 25 for women and men, respectively. For ischemic heart disease the relative risks are 2.9 and 2.5 and for stroke they are 2.1 and 1.9.
These are the results presented from two studies of very large populations of Americans published January 24, 2013 by the New England Journal of Medicine, one by Prabhat Jha and colleagues and another by Michael Thun and colleagues. Each analyzed different populations but arrived at essentially the same conclusions. 
Alarming as these numbers appear, there is hope. Those who quit smoking will gain back substantial years of life, with more years gained the sooner one ceases smoking. For example, in Jha’s analysis, those who quit in the age range 25-34 reverted almost to the nonsmoker status – they gained back 10 years of life. Stopping between 35-44 years of age gained 9 years and between 45-54 years of age the gain was 6 years.
 
It is never too late to quit and the benefits are clearly substantial.

 
 
 
 

Praise for Dr Schimpff

The craft of science writing requires skills that are arguably the most underestimated and misunderstood in the media world. Dumbing down all too often gets mistaken for clarity. Showmanship frequently masks a poor presentation of scientific issues. Factoids are paraded in lieu of ideas. Answers are marketed at the expense of searching questions. By contrast, Steve Schimpff provides a fine combination of enlightenment and reading satisfaction. As a medical scientist he brings his readers encyclopedic knowledge of his subject. As a teacher and as a medical ambassador to other disciplines he's learned how to explain medical breakthroughs without unnecessary jargon. As an advisor to policymakers he's acquired the knack of cutting directly to the practical effects, showing how advances in medical science affect the big lifestyle and economic questions that concern us all. But Schimpff's greatest strength as a writer is that he's a physician through and through, caring above all for the person. His engaging conversational style, insights and fascinating treasury of cutting-edge information leave both lay readers and medical professionals turning his pages. In his hands the impact of new medical technologies and discoveries becomes an engrossing story about what lies ahead for us in the 21st century: as healthy people, as patients of all ages, as children, as parents, as taxpayers, as both consumers and providers of health services. There can be few greater stories than the adventure of what awaits our minds, bodies, budgets, lifespans and societies as new technologies change our world. Schimpff tells it with passion, vision, sweep, intelligence and an urgency that none of us can ignore.

-- N.J. Slabbert, science writer, co-author of Innovation, The Key to Prosperity: Technology & America's Role in the 21st Century Global Economy (with Aris Melissaratos, director of technology enterprise at the John Hopkins University).