50-Year Tobacco Study Shows Smokers Lose a Decade of Life [06/22/04]

50-Year Tobacco Study Shows Smokers Lose a Decade of Life [06/22-2]

Excerpts from: 50-year tobacco study shows smokers lose a decade of life

Cancer Research UK [06/22/04]

On average cigarette smokers die ten years younger than non-smokers, according to a 50-year-long study of smoking and death among British doctors, published in this week's British Medical Journal. But stopping at age 50 halves the risk, and stopping at 30 avoids almost all of it.

Sir Richard Doll, emeritus Professor of Medicine at the Clinical Trial Service Unit (CTSU), University of Oxford, launched the study in 1951 when he himself was in his 30s.

Now in his 90s, he reveals the final results. Among the doctors born between 1900 and 1930, about half of the cigarette smokers were killed by their habit. However, there is a unique group, born around 1920, among whom two-thirds of those who continue to smoke cigarettes are killed.

The study, funded by the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation, also demonstrates the benefits of quitting smoking at any age. Stopping smoking at ages 60, 50, 40 or 30 gains, respectively, about 3, 6, 9 or 10 years of life expectancy.

British men born in the first few decades of the 20th century are the first population in the world in which the full hazards of long-term cigarette smoking, and the corresponding benefits of stopping, can be assessed directly.

Doctors were chosen to be the subjects of the study because they were a relatively simple group to follow through the Medical Register held by the General Medical Council.

Sir Richard Peto, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at Oxford, who has collaborated on the study for 30 years, says: "On average, those who continue to smoke lose 10 years of life but stopping smoking at ages 60, 50, 40 or 30 gains 3, 6, 9 or the full 10 years of life expectancy. Of those who continued to smoke, half were killed by their habit."

A unique group of men born around 1920 faced even worse odds. Smoking killed two-thirds of those who continued to smoke cigarettes. The study authors attribute the peculiarly high risk for this particular generation to conscription into the British army from 1939 onwards.

The armed forces provided low cost cigarettes to conscripts, which established the addiction with an intense early exposure to smoking.

"In Britain, tobacco has caused six million deaths over the last 50 years. But, worldwide, tobacco will soon be causing six million deaths each year."

Professor Alex Markham, Cancer Research UK's Chief Executive, says: "The tobacco epidemic is a global health catastrophe composed of millions of personal tragedies – the biggest tragedy being that it is preventable. Tobacco is responsible for a third of all UK cancer deaths. Since the study began in 1951, tobacco has killed around 100 million people globally."

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