January 24, 1994Archives of Internal Medicine
Smoking Cessation and Time Course of Decreased Risks of Coronary Heart Disease in Middle-Aged Women
Why the study?
Does smoking cessation reduce the risk of incident coronary heart disease in middle-aged women?
Population
117,006 female registered nurses aged 30 to 55 years who were free of coronary heart disease, stroke, and…
Comparison
Smoking cessation (former smokers) vs Current smokers and never smokers
Design
Cohort
Follow-up
12 years
Authors
Discussion
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Member takes
Implication
Supports cessation counseling in middle-aged women; leaves open causal confirmation of risk normalization timeline.
Key Points
- To understand how the time since stopping smoking affects the risk of coronary heart disease in middle-aged women.
- Analysis based on 12 years of data from the Nurses' Health Study.
- Follow-up included 117,006 female registered nurses aged 30 to 55 years.
- Updated smoking habits assessed via mailed questionnaires every 2 years.
- 970 incident cases of coronary heart disease occurred during the study.
- Current smokers had a multivariate relative risk of 4.23 (95% CI, 3.60 to 4.96) compared to never smokers.
- One third of the excess risk was eliminated within 2 years of cessation, returning to baseline levels by 10-14 years.
Structured PICO
Does smoking cessation reduce the risk of incident coronary heart disease in middle-aged women?
P
Population
117,006 female registered nurses aged 30 to 55 years who were free of coronary heart disease, stroke, and cancer at baseline.
I
Intervention
Smoking cessation (former smokers)
C
Comparator
Current smokers and never smokers
O
Outcome
Incident coronary heart disease, defined as nonfatal myocardial infarction plus fatal coronary heart diseasehard clinical
Smoking cessation in middle-aged women leads to an immediate reduction in coronary heart disease risk, with risk returning to that of never-smokers within 10 to 14 years.
Cite This Study
Ichiro Kawachi (1994) studied this question.