Individuals who smoke since childhood are three times more likely to contract cardiovascular disease. However, quitting as soon as possible would reduce this same risk. According to the authors of a study, quitting before the age of forty would reduce the risk by 90%!
At the end of 2019, we took stock of smoking around the globe. Remember that the World Health Organization (WHO) aims to reduce by 30% by 2025 tobacco use globally. However, the global proportion of smokers fell from 27% to 20% (a drop of 7%) between 2000 and 2016.
Furthermore, the issue of youth raises questions, because unfortunately, 11% of children between the ages of thirteen and fifteen use tobacco. However, in a research letter published by the Journal of the American Heart Association on October 28, 2020, researchers stated that the highest risk is for individuals who started before the age of fifteen . Nevertheless, according to them, this could be caught up in the event of smoking cessation before the age of forty.
"The age at which a person starts smoking is an important and often overlooked factor, and those who start smoking at a young age are at particularly high risk of die prematurely from cardiovascular disease “, can we read in the document.
Study directors analyzed data from nearly 400,000 American adults . Among the latter, we find 58% non-smokers, 23% former smokers and 19% smokers. Among smokers, 2% had started smoking before the age of ten and 19% between ten and fourteen. According to the results, smokers who started before the age of fifteen are three times more likely than non-smokers to die from cardiovascular disease.
Nevertheless, the study indicates that in former smokers, quitting early reduces the risk . Sometimes, this reduction in risk even joins that concerning non-smokers. The researchers of the study evoke a multiplication by 1.2 for a stop between 35 and 44 years and by 1.7 between 55 and 64 years. In addition, quitting smoking between the ages of 15 and 34 has a risk similar to that of non-smokers . According to the researchers, quitting before the age of forty therefore reduces this same risk by 90%.
Finally, let's remember that in France, a quarter of citizens smoke on a daily basis. The Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin (BEH) of Public Health France published in May 2020 estimated that in 2015, 21% of hospital stays due to cardiovascular disease (more than 250,000) were related to smoking. The document specified that if 20% of the French population smoked (instead of 24% today) it would be possible to avoid more than 25,000 admissions per year.
