A large study found that people who quit smoking cigarettes before the age of 35 brought their mortality risk in line with those who never smoked at all. Quitting at a later age came with lesser, but still substantial, benefits, according to researchers.
According to Live Science, former smokers who quit between ages 35 and 44 had a 21% higher death rate from any cause than those who never smoked. Those who stopped smoking between the ages of 45 and 54 had a 47% higher, all-cause mortality than “never-smokers.”
“Among men and women from diverse racial and ethnic groups, current smoking was associated with at least twice the all-cause mortality rate of never smoking,” the study authors wrote in recent report published in the journal JAMA Network Open. “Quitting smoking, particularly at younger ages, was associated with substantial reductions in the relative excess mortality associated with continued smoking.”
This is the third large study to find that quitting by age 35, especially for those who started smoking at a young age, brings the most substantial benefits.
“It has been known for a long time that the earlier a smoker quits, the better,” said John P. Pierce, a professor in public health at UC San Diego. Pierce, an expert in cancer prevention, population tobacco use, and health behavior interventions, was not involved in the new study but said that is now possible to be be more specific with respect to the age a smoker should quit.
The new study used data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey and the National Death Index, a database of the nation’s death records. The researchers analyzed more than 550,000 people who completed the survey’s health questionnaires between January 1997 and December 2018 and were between ages 25 and 84 at the time of recruitment. The participants included current smokers, former smokers, and those considered to be never smokers (smoking fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime).
The National Death Index revealed that nearly 75,000 of these study participants died by the end of 2019. Compared to never smokers, current smokers showed a significantly higher all-cause death rate as well as higher rates of death from cancer, heart disease and lung disease.
Non-Hispanic white smokers had the highest all-cause mortality, which was three times higher than that of never smokers. Non-white smokers, including both Hispanic and non-Hispanic people, had slightly lower mortality rates, about twice that of never smokers. According to Live Science, this could be because these participants reported smoking fewer daily cigarettes or started smoking at older ages.
“These results remind us that reducing intensity (cigarettes per day) should be one of the goals for tobacco control programs,” said Price. But the bottom line from the results of the study was that quitting smoking reduced the risk of death for all groups. Those who quit by age 45 cut their excess risk of death by up to 90%, and those who quit by the age of 35, cut their risk to those of people who never smoked. The study also found that the more time passed after an individual quit smoking the closer their mortality rate was to that of a nonsmoker.