Smoking only about one cigarette per day carries a risk of developing coronary heart disease and stroke much greater than expected — around half that for people who smoke 20 per day, according to a review of 55 publications from 141 cohort studies, published online in the journal BMJ.
There is no safe level of smoking, scientists say. Image credit: Myriams Fotos.
“What this tells us is that people who smoke shouldn’t just cut down — they should aim to stop smoking altogether,” said lead author Professor Allan Hackshaw, from Cancer Research UK and UCL Cancer Trials Centre, University College London.
“There is no safe level of smoking!”
Individual studies have reported that smoking only one to five cigarettes per day is associated with a higher than expected risk of heart disease.
To investigate this further, Professor Hackshaw and co-authors analyzed the results of 141 studies and estimated the relative risks for smoking one, five, or 20 cigarettes per day.
The researchers found that men who smoked one cigarette per day had 46% of the excess risk of heart disease and 41% of the excess risk of stroke associated with smoking 20 cigarettes per day (much higher than the expected one 20th, or 5%).
For women, those who smoked one cigarette per day had 31% of the excess risk of heart disease and 34% of the excess risk of stroke associated with smoking 20 cigarettes per day.
Their heart disease risk was more than doubled with one cigarette per day, when only studies that controlled for several factors were included in the analysis.
“People who smoke less can benefit from big risk reductions for disorders like lung cancer,” Professor Hackshaw said.
“But we would encourage those who are cutting back to go one step further and stop smoking entirely to reduce their risk of heart disease and stroke — two common diseases.”
In other terms, when compared with people who don’t smoke, women who smoke about one cigarette per day have a 57% higher risk of heart disease and a 31% higher risk of for stroke (or 119% and 46% when allowing for multiple confounders).
For men, the increased risk of heart disease posed by smoking once a day is 48%, and 25% for stroke compared to non-smokers (or 74% and 30%, respectively, when allowing for confounding factors).
“As we have found that a large proportion of the cardiovascular risk caused by smoking comes from just one cigarette per day, we hope that our findings could be used to strengthen public health campaigns and provide increased incentive for people to stop smoking,” Professor Hackshaw said.
“Smokers could make use of various smoking cessation aids, with positive support from friends and their family doctor.”
“The great news is that much of the risk of heart disease and stroke goes away only a few years after stopping.”
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Allan Hackshaw et al. Low cigarette consumption and risk of coronary heart disease and stroke: meta-analysis of 141 cohort studies in 55 study reports. BMJ 2018 (360): j5855; doi: 10.1136/bmj.j5855
