Alarge U.S. study has found that the mortality rate of a one that quits smoking before age 35 was on par with “never smokers.”
The study, published Monday within the journal JAMA Network Open, used data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey and the National Death Index.
“Amongst men and girls from diverse racial and ethnic groups, current smoking was related to at the least twice the all-cause mortality rate of never smoking,” the study authors wrote within the paper.
“Quitting smoking, particularly at younger ages, was related to substantial reductions within the relative excess mortality related to continued smoking,” the authors further stated.
Nonetheless, those that quit smoking at a later age showed their mortality rate decline.
The study found people, who gave up smoking between ages 35 and 44, had a 21% higher death rate from any cause than never smokers. A 47% higher all-cause mortality rate than never-smokers was observed in those that quit between ages 45 and 54.
Never smokers are those individuals who have smoked lower than 100 cigarettes of their life.
That is the third such study to search out that age 35 is the suitable age to quit smoking, John P. Pierce, a professor emeritus within the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health on the University of California, San Diego, and who was not involved within the study, wrote in a commentary of the study.
“It has been known for a very long time that the sooner a smoker quits, the higher,” Pierce wrote. “Nonetheless, it’s now possible to be more specific with respect to the age that a smoker quits.”
The survey data had greater than 550,000 adult participants, between 25 and 84 years old, who filled out the questionnaires between January 1997 and December 2018.
The lot included current smokers, former smokers, and never-smokers.
From the info from the National Death Index, the researchers found nearly 75,000 of the study subjects had died by the tip of 2019.
The group with the worst consequence, the study found, was non-Hispanic white smokers, who had the best all-cause mortality rate — about 3 times higher in comparison with never smokers.
Alternatively, non-white smokers, each Hispanic and non-Hispanic people, showed barely lower mortality rates, which were about double that of never smokers.
The lower mortality rate accorded to this group may be as a result of fewer cigarettes smoked per day, on average. Additionally they start smoking at older ages and are less prone to smoke day by day, compared with white subjects.
“These results remind us that reducing smoking intensity (cigarettes per day) must be one in all the goals for tobacco control programs,” Pierce commented.