According to a recent press release at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), individuals who smoke are at considerable risk of mortality, regardless of their age. Until recently, thorough epidemiological studies had not been conducted to determine the relationship between smoking in older generations and mortality risks. However, researchers claim that individuals who survive to 70 years of age are still at risk, and will lose many years of life.
Two research scientists, Dr. Jonathan Emberson and Dr. Robert Clark seized the opportunity to track the health and lifestyles of elderly males, between the age of 66 and 97; 7,000 of these individuals were taken from a population of subjects that took part in a Whitehall study of civil servants from London.
The study calculated what it classified as hazard ratios for each member of the studied population, and factored into the equation the degree to which smoking impacted a subject’s mortality. These results were adjusted to reflect a variety of factors, including an individual’s age, employment status and clinical history of cancer and vascular disease.
Overall, more than 70% of the participants died during the study, which lasted a duration of 15 years, representing a figure of 5,000 men. The two researchers found a hazard ratio of 1.5 for smokers, which denotes a 50% higher death rate in smokers, relative to their non-smoking counterparts.
