Dementia risk gives smokers another reason to quit, study says
Dementia risk gives smokers another reason to quit
, study says
Dementia risk gives smokers another reason to quit, study says
Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia are more likely to strike people who smoked heavily in their 50s and 60s than to afflict nonsmokers, a study found.
Among more than 21,000 people followed for 23 years, 25 percent were diagnosed with dementia at an average age of 81, the research found. Those who puffed two or more packs of cigarettes a day had more than twice the risk of dementia compared with nonsmokers, said authors from Finland and the U.S.
The study, published today in the Archieves of Internal Medicine, is the first to look at the consequences of heavy smoking during midlife on dementia. About 46 million Americans ages 18 or older are cigarette smokers, according to the U.S.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in Atlanta.
We can definitively say from this study that heavy smoking increases your risk of dementia in late life," said Rachel Whitmer, an author of the study and a scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, in Oakland, California, in a telephone interview on Oct. 22. "Smoking has negative consequences on the whole body. The brain is not immune."
Whitmer said smoking causes higher levels of inflammation in the body and affects how blood clots. Smokers are also more likely to have strokes, high blood pressure and cerebrovascular disease -- a malady of the blood vessels, particularly the arteries that supply the brain -- which aRisk Findings
The researchers found that those who smoked one to two packs a day had a 44 percent higher risk of dementia later in life compared with nonsmokers, and those who smoked a half pack to one pack daily had a 37 percent higher risk. People who had already quit smoking at the start of the trial, or who smoked less than a half a pack a day, faced a hazard similar to that of nonsmokers, the authors said.
In the U.S., smoking is responsible for about one in five deaths, the American Cancer Society said on its website. That makes the habit the nation's biggest cause of preventable death. Aside from cancer, smoking is a cause of heart attacks, strokes, chronic bronchitis and stomach ulcers, the Atlanta-based cancer group said.
The study researchers analyzed data on 21,123 health-plan members of Kaiser Permanente who participated in a survey, conducted from 1978 to 1985, that asked questions about smoking. The scientists looked at diagnoses of dementia, Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia made by doctors from 1994 to 2008.
Dementia Diagnoses
In the study, 5,367 people, or 25 percent, were diagnosed with dementia. Of those, 63 smoked two or more packs a day, while 283 smoked between one pack and two and 435 had between a half and one pack daily.
The researchers also found that the heaviest smokers had a 157 percent increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and a 172 percent higher risk of developing vascular dementia than nonsmokers.
The findings "confirm what people had suspected for a while now," said William Theies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Chicago-based Alzheimer's Association, in a telephone interview on Oct. 22. "If, for people who are contemplating stopping, this is another force that moves them in the direction of smoking cessation, then that is a good thing."
David Sutton, a spokesman, for Richmond, Virginia-based Altria Group Inc, the largest U.S. tobacco company, said in an e-mail on Oct. 22 that Altria "agrees with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking is addictive and causes serious diseases in smokers."
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