In a new study, researchers found each cigarette smoked a day by heavier smokers increases the risk of contracting some diseases by more than 30%.
They linked heavier smoking with 28 separate health conditions, revealing a 17-fold increase in emphysema, 8-fold increase in atherosclerosis (clogged arteries) and a 6.5-fold higher incidence of lung cancer.
The research was conducted by a team at the University of South Australia and elsewhere.
The team analyzed hospital data and mortality statistics from more than 152,483 ever-smokers in the UK Biobank to look at how heavier smoking affects disease risks.
The team says the risk of suffering respiratory diseases, cancers, and cardiovascular diseases increased with each cigarette smoked per day.
The links between heavier smoking and emphysema, heart disease, pneumonia, and respiratory cancers were particularly high, but the researchers also found associations with many other respiratory diseases, renal failure, septicemia, eye disorders, and complications of surgery or medical procedures.
The team says tobacco smoking is the leading preventable cause of death worldwide and smokers typically die 10 years earlier than non-smokers.
Despite a global decline in smoking over the last 20 years, an estimated 20% of the world’s population aged over 15 years are still smoking tobacco.
In the US alone, smokers number 40 million, with 16 million of those living with a disease caused by smoking. This costs its economy more than $300 billion per annum.
The most recent statistics from Australia show that about 13.8%of its adult population (2.6 million people) are daily smokers.
Despite a 10% reduction since 1995, smoking is estimated to kill 19,000 Australians a year, accounting for 9% of the total burden of disease and $137 billion in annual medical costs.
Several known smoking outcomes, including stroke, were not identified in the study, which only counted cases above 200 for each health condition.
The study shows that each additional cigarette smoked matters, notably increasing the risks of cancer, respiratory, circulatory and many other diseases.
One author of the study is UniSA Professor Elina Hypponen.
The study is published in EClinicalMedicine.
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